F 347 
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Cop,y i 




History of Hinds County 
Mississippi 

1821 - 1922 



Published in commemoration of the 

centenary of the City of Jackson, 

the capital of the State. 

1821-22 — 1922 



By 
Mrs. Dunbar Rowland 

{Eron O. Rowland) 



With the compliments of the 

MISSISSIPPI HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

Dunbar Rowland, 
Secretary. 

The Capitol, 

Jackson, Mississippi, 
March 22, 1922. 



History of Hinds County 
Mississippi 

1821 - 1922 



Published in commemoration of the 

centenary of the City of Jackson, 

the capital of the State. 

1821 - 22 — 1922 



By 
Mrs. Dunbar Rowland 

[Eron O. Rowland)^ '}y\oore) 



JONES PTG. CO JACKSON. MISS 






Dedicated to Anne Mims Wright (Mrs. William R.) 
and to the men and women of the city of Jackson and 
of Hinds county whose interest in the preservation of 
the history of their State has been an inspiration to 
the author. 



PREFACE 

This history of Hinds county is one of the entire num- 
ber of histories of the counties of Mississippi that the His- 
torical Society has undertaken to prepare for its readers. 
The more advanced States have many volumes devoted to 
county history. With a few exceptions careful histories 
of Mississippi counties have not as yet been prepared, and 
in this collection the author has endeavored to lay the foun- 
dation for all writers who come after to build upon. The 
publication of the history of Hinds county where the State 
capital is located seems at this time, when the city of 
Jackson is contemplating a celebration of its one hundredth 
anniversary, eminently fitting. In fact both the city and 
county could well celebrate together, as scarcely a year 
intervenes between their legislative natal days, the county 
having been established February 12, 1821, and the city 
November 28, 1821. 

This work has received the commendation of the Secre- 
tary and other members of the Historical Society. Still, 
as Roosevelt has observed in other' phrasing is his history, 
'The Naval War of 1812" covering Jackson's Coast cam- 
paign against the British, 1813-15, where there are so many 
opinions perfect history is not possible. The author, how- 
ever, has striven to present the important events that helped 
to make the history of the county and believes that the 
subject has been treated with a fair degree of accuracy. 
If any important incidents have been overlooked she will 
gladly receive such information for future use. 



<! 



HINDS COUNTY 

Chapter I 

Though not as old as the counties formed from the 
Natchez District, which was partly settled when the coun- 
try was a colonial possession, Hinds County, nevertheless, 
has a history of great importance in the annals of Mis- 
sissippi. Situated in the west-central section of the state, 
it originally included a region which had long been a center 
of much speculative interest, since it was territory greatly 
desired by the national government, and also by the people 
of the new state of Mississippi. George Poindexter, then 
governor of the state, having become intensely interested in 
acquiring this large area of land, exerted himself in every 
possible manner in bringing about an understanding with the 
Choctaw Indians, looking to a treaty ceding it to the United 
States. In 1820 Congress appropriated $20,000 for the 
expenses of the treaty, and the Mississippi delegation in 
Congress had proposed that Generals Andrew Jackson and 
Thomas Hinds be selected to negotiate a treaty with the 
Indians. In accepting. General Jackson said he did so be- 
cause he could refuse neither President Monroe nor Mis- 
sissippi. 

While Jackson and Hinds were both influential with the 
Choctaws, no farther back than the preceding April, when 
the former with Colonels John McKee and Daniel Burnet 
had received a commission from the governor to treat with 
the Indians, he had been met with the reply from Pushmat- 
aha and Mushula-Tubbee, Indian chiefs, that they were very 
sorry they could not comply with the request of the Great 
Father. ''We wish to remain here," said the great chief- 
tains, "where we have grown up as the herbs of the woods, 
and do not wish to be transplanted to another soil. These of 
our people who are over the Mississippi did not go there with 
the consent of the nation ; they are considered as strangers, 
they are like wolves." This chief affirmed that they were 
quite willing to have them ordered back. "I am well ac- 
quainted with the country contemplated for us," said 



Pushmataha, '1 have often had my feet bruised there by the 
rough land." They had decided that they had no land to 
spare. If a man gave half his garment, the other half would 
be of no use to him. ''When we had land to spare, we gave 
it with very little talk to the commissioners you sent to us 
at Tombigboe, as children ought to do to the father." 
They hoped for the continued protection of their father. 
"When a child wakes in the night," he eloquently continued, 
'*he feels for the arms of his father to shield him from 
danger." 

The commissioners were sorely disappointed by the re- 
sult. They had been certain that the Six Towns were ready 
to move, and believed that only a few half-breeds had made 
trouble. But the Indians were, at the same time, endeav- 
oring to raise money to send a delegation to Washington 
for the purpose of retaining their lands. 

However, the varied influences brought to bear made 
them consent to a discussion of the treaty, and after many 
talks and conferences in which everything possible was 
said to encourage them to join their kindred who had mi- 
grated to the territory alloted them in the West, the ces- 
sion took place in October, 1820, at Doak's Stand. The 
most distinguished chiefs of the Choctaw Nation met 
the American commissioners. General Andrew Jackson, and 
General Thomas Hinds — the former an envoy of the Na- 
tional government and the latter a representative of the 
State of Mississippi, in what they designated the Council 
Square. These treaties were usually attended with much 
pomp and ceremony on the part of the Indians, and it is 
stated that Generals Jackson and Hinds appeared at the 
council in the full uniform of generals of the United States 
Army. The Indians were still represented by the cele- 
brated medal chieftains, Pushmataha and Mushula-Tubbee, 
both of whom were on the best terms with' the American 
plenipotentiaries and full of admiration for the military 
honors they had won in expelling the British from the south- 
ern coast in the War of 1812. Jackson, with his usual sa- 
gacity, decided what "chord" he declared he meant "to 



touch," and asked that he be authorized to show the Choc- 
taws the actual bounds of the new land where they were to 
be perpetuated as a nation. The government had authoriz- 
ed a promise of a portion of the Quapaw cession in the Ar- 
kansas Territory. John Pitchlyn and his son, the former an 
official United States interpreter, were crafty abettors of 
the treaty and represented to Jackson that Pushmataha and 
Mushula-Tubbee were now delighted to meet him. 

The Encyclopedia of Mississippi History contains the 
following account of the memorable treaty, which is given in 
full on account of its importance in the early history of not 
only Hinds county, but of so many other counties which 
have been carved out of it : 

'The great council was called to meet October 1st, at 
a council ground on the Natchez Trace, (between Natchez 
and Tennessee), near Doak's Stand, a tavern about four 
miles north of Pearl River in what is now the southeast 
corner of Madison county. William Eastin was appointed 
commissary and Samuel R. Overton secretary, and Jackson 
and suite set out from Nashville September 14, 1820, reach- 
ing Doak's Stand on the 28th, where they were joined two 
days later by Hinds and McKee and a squad of soldiers 
under Lieut. Graham. The commissioners removed to the 
treaty ground, about half a mile below Doak's, October 2, 
and a few Indians came in that evening. There was soon 
evidence that some white men and half breeds had formed 
a combination to prevent; a treaty and Jackson and Hinds 
sent out a talk urging the nation that they must come and 
hear the talk from their father or he might never speak 
again. 

'Tuchshenubbee and his men were particularly offish. 
Mushula-Tubbee was on hand, but with few followers. 
Gradually a better feeling grew, and after a great ball 
game, October 9, the talk was begun. Three formal talks 
were made by General Jackson; the Indians were in long 
and confused deliberation by themselves, and finally on the 
18th of October, 1820, the treaty prepared by Jackson was 
accepted and signed by the mingoes, headmen and war- 



— 8 — 

riors present. The old chief Puchshenubbee was the last 
to yield, and an attempt was made by some of his people 
to depose him. 'Donations' of $500 each were made to him 
and the other two mingoes and John Pitchlyn, and smaller 
amounts to others of influence, amounting to $4,675, of 
which the ball players got only $8. October 22, Jackson 
and his party started on the return to Nashville. 

*The treaty was made, as appears from the preamble, 
to promote the civilization of the Choctaws by the estab- 
lishment of schools, and to perpetuate them as a nation by 
exchange of a part of their land for a country beyond the 
Mississippi. The nation ceded all within the following 
limits: 'Beginning on the Choctaw boundary east of Pearl 
river, at a point due south of the White Oak Spring, on the 
old Indian path; thence north to said spring; thence north- 
wardly to a black oak standing on the Natchez road, about 
four poles eastwardly from Doak's fence, marked A. J. and 
blazed, with two large pines and a black oak standing near 
thereto and marked as pointers ; thence a straight line to 
the head of Black creek or Bogue Loosa ; thence down Black 
creek to a small lake ; thence a direct course so as to strike 
the Mississippi one mile below the mouth of the Arkansas 
river ; thence down the Mississippi to our boundary ; thence 
round and along the same to the beginning.' Roughly 
speaking, this is th^ west half of the middle third of the 
State, including the south part of the Yazoo Delta, estimated 
at 5,500,000 acres in all. In consideration the United 
States ceded to the Choctaws a region in the west. The 
Cherokees had already been traded lands in that quarter, 
and the Choctaw east line was to run from their corner on 
the Arkansas river to a point three miles below the mouth 
of Little river on the Red. West of this the Choctaw do- 
main would extend, between the Red and Canadian, to the 
source of the latter. It was provided that the boundaries 
established 'shall remain without alteration, until the 
period at which said nation shall become so civilized and 
enlightened as to be made citizens of the United States; 
and congress shall lay off a limited parcel of land for the 
benefit of each family or individual in the nation.' Aid 



— 9 — 

was to be given poor Indians who wished to move ; and an 
agent, and other assistance provided in the west; fifty- 
four sections (square miles) were to be laid oif in the 
Mississippi land ceded, to be sold to raise a fund for the sup- 
port of Choctaw schools on both sides of the Mississippi 
river; there was another reservation promised to make up 
for the appropriation by some of the chiefs of the $6,000 
education annuity for the past sixteen years. All who had 
separate settlements, within the area ceded, might remain 
as owners of one mile square, or sell at full appraised value; 
compensation was to be made for buildings; the warriors 
were to be paid for their services at Pensacola; $200 was 
promised each district for the support of a police; Mushula- 
Tubbee was guaranteed an annuity the same as had been 
paid his father. 

"At the next session of congress, $65,000 was appro- 
priated to carry this treaty into effect, and in March, 
1821, John C. Calhoun, the secretary of war, notified the 
Choctaw agent at that time, Maj. William Ward, that he 
was to superintend the emigration of the Indians. Blankets, 
rifles and other necessaries, for 500 were sent to Natchez. 
Edmund Folsom, interpreter for the Six Towns, had been 
selected by Jackson and Hinds to collect those who were 
willing to go, and conduct them to the promised land. Henry 
D. Downs, of Warren county, was appointed to survey the 
land in the west, and he reported in December, that he 
had run the east line of the tract. 

"As soon as the treaty of Doak's Stand became known 
in Arkansas a great protest was made. Congress yielded 
to it and diverted the appropriation of $65,000 to the mak- 
ing of a new treaty to change the line to one due south 
from the southwest corner of Missouri. This had hardly 
been done, when Arkansas asked a further extension, and 
an act was passed to move the line forty miles west. But 
the Choctaws stood firmly on the treaty Jackson had made, 
and the result was the treaty of Washington in 1825." 

Claiborne has characterized the southern Indian as a 
born politician and diplomat, but little in his dealings with 



— 10 — 

the white people in parting with his lands gives any sub- 
stantial proof that he possessed these accomplishments so 
characteristic of a ripe if not an over-ripe civilization. Not- 
withstanding his fierce and cruel nature, others have repre- 
sented him as a weak and credulous creature, but there was 
not so much of the credulous in him as the thoughtless 
might suppose. While yielding when insidiously and per- 
sistently flattered with what^ seemed a childish weakness, 
he was in truth critical and i>esentful and nursed a grievance 
for the wrongs he endured from the white people, traits 
that are born of too much sincerity for the making of good 
politicians and diplomats. 

The treaty of Doak's Stand and the removal of the In- 
dians to the west, the latter undertaking having been 
placed in the hands of Maj. William Ward, met with much 
approval by the people of Mississippi, and everywhere in the 
older southern states an intense interest was manifested in 
the new territory open for purchase and population. With 
its succession of dark, level, prairies, rich valleys and heavi- 
ly timbered tracts of valuable woods, it held out rare in- 
ducements not only to the younger sons of the large planters 
of the older southern states, but to the wealthy planters of 
Mississippi. Sensible of its debt of gratitude to the com- 
missioners who had treated with the Indians so success- 
fully, the legislature which convened the following Febru- 
ary, 1821, passed the following resolution: 

^'Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives 
of the State of Mississippi, in General Assembly convened, 
that the thanks of the General Assembly of this state be 
presented to Major-General Andrew Jackson and our dis- 
tinguished fellow-citizen, Major-General Thomas Hinds, 
commissioners plenipotentiary on the part of the United 
States to treat with the Choctaw tribe of Indians, for their 
patriotic and indefatigable exertions in effecting a treaty 
with the said tribe of Indians, whereby their claim has 
been extinguished to a large portion of land within this 
state." 

The newly acquired territory was still without a name 
and the legislature at the same session on February 12, 1821, 



— 11 — 

passed an act declaring that "all that tract of land ceded to 
the United States by the Choctaw Nation of Indians on the 
18th day of October, 1820, and bounded as above stated, shall 
be and is hereby directed and established into a new county, 
which shall be called and known by the name of Hinds," in 
honor of General Thomas Hinds, one of the heroes in Jack- 
son's Coast Campaign against the British in 1813-15. After 
conferring upon it one of the most honored names of the 
state, the act placed the new county of Hinds in the then 
First Judicial District. On February 12th, 1821, an act 
was passed authorizing Governor Poindexter to issue a 
proclamation "ordering and directing the election of a 
sheriif and coroner for the county of Hinds." In this man- 
ner the large county which was so often styled "the Mother 
of Counties" began its existence. Provided with a govern- 
ment and endowed with all the necessary rights for func- 
tioning, the new county lacked only numbers in her popu- 
lation, the remaining Indians taking no part in the affairs 
of the state. The pleasant and beautiful region, so well 
suited to agriculture, was rapidly settled by a wealthy 
slave-holding class, and in the more hilly districts and pine 
forests a class of small farmers. 

By January 21, 1823, the legislature saw fit to create 
Yazoo County out of Hinds, and by the same act the county 
of Copiah, embracing what are now Copiah and Simpson 
Counties and a part of Lincoln County. A little later, Feb- 
ruary 4, 1828, Rankin County was created from that 
part of Hinds County then lying east of Pearl River. And 
again Hinds County on February 5th, 1829, surrend- 
ered the fractional township 7 in ranges 2 and 3 to be at- 
tached to Madison County, which was carved out of Yazoo 
County. These townships were long thereafter called the 
"Stolen townships," because the act excising them from 
Hinds County was rushed through the legislature by the 
representatives of Madison County in the absence of the 
representatives from Hinds county. The several large 
counties mentioned, created from the original territory ot 
Hinds, gave of their area for the formation of numerous 
other newer counties. 



— 12 — 

When Mississippi was admitted as a State in 1817, the 
question of the location of the capital was a troublesome 
one. Washington and Natchez, the old capitals, were con- 
sidered too far from the center of the State; other towns 
were anxious to have the capital located in their midst. It 
was temporarily arranged that Columbia should be the seat 
of government ; at the same time it was decided that a per- 
manent capital should be located near the center of the 
State. In 1821, the legislature, which met in the court- 
house at Columbia, Marion county, appointed commission- 
ers to select such a place. Touching the important early 
history of the capital, the following extract from the En- 
cyclopedia of Mississippi History will be found interesting: 

"The Choctaw cession of 1820 provided a central re- 
gion, and by act of the legislature of February 12, 1821, 
Thomas Hinds, James Patton and William Lattimore were 
appointed commissioners to locate within twenty miles of 
the true center of the state the two sections of land which 
congress had donated for a seat of government. 

"Major Freeman, the suveyor, estimated that the cen- 
ter of the State was close to Doak's Stand on the Natchez- 
Tennessee road and Choctaw line, in what is now Madison 
county. Hinds and Lattimore, accompanied by Middleton 
Mackay, guide and interpreter, set out from Columbia for 
that spot November 12. They visited Yellow Bluff, but 
found it objectionable, and decided there was no desirable 
place on the Big Black or anywhere within the limits set 
by the legislature. So they returned to LeFleur's Bluff, 
ten miles south of the Choctaw agency. They had passed 
this bluff going up and were satisfied by the beautiful emin- 
ence north of and continuous with the bluff, falling east- 
wardly into an extensive and fertile flat, and continued by 
high, rolling land on the west. A never-failing spring of 
pure water in front of the eminence and the good water of 
the creek, the fertile soil, abundant timber, and evidently 
healthful air, added to the attractions. The river was 
navigable — a keel boat had gone up beyond the bluff several 
times, the school section of the township was within a mile 
of the eminence, and the fact that it was thirty-five miles 



— 13 — 

south of the center was only a recommendation to the pres- 
ent population. In their report to the legislature, Novem- 
ber 20, 1821, they suggested that this was a favorable time 
for the experiment of a town on the 'checker-board plan' as 
suggested by President Jefferson to Governor Claiborne, 
seventeen years before, i. e., the alternate squares to be 
parks. The original manuscript map of Jackson made by 
P. A. Vandorn, now on file in the Department of Archives 
and History, follows that plan. On November 28, 1821, the 
legislature ratified the choice, and authorized Hinds, Latti- 
more and Peter A. Vandorn, commissioners, to locate two ad- 
joining half sections, and lay off a town, to be named Jackson, 
in honor of Major-General Andrew Jackson. To this site 
the offices were ordered removed by the fourth Monday of 
November 1822, when the legislature should meet at the 
new capital. In April following, (1822), Abraham Defrance, 
of Washington, superintendent of public buildings, re- 
paired to the site, to begin operations, and he was 
soon followed by the three commissioners, accom- 
panied by a number of prospective settlers. The 
town was laid off, with Capital green. Court green 
and College green parks, and various reservations, 
and only ten lots were offered for sale, the purchasers 
agreeing to build log or frame houses by November. 
Among the settlers were Lieut-Governor Dickson, who was 
appointed postmaster in October; Joseph Winn and Maj. 
Jones. B. M. Hines contracted to build a State house of 
brick, two stories high, 40 by 30, to be completed October 
15, for $3,500. The clay for brick and limestone for lime 
were found close at hand. There was an advertisement of 
100 lots to be sold January, 1823. G. B. Crutcher started 
The Pearl River Gazette, and Peter Isler the State Register,^ 
which were the first newspapers published at the State 
capital. 

''In 1829 the senate passed a bill to remove the capital 
to Clinton, but it was defeated in the house by a tie vote. 
The proposition was renewed in 1830, and the house voted, 
18 to 17, to move to Port Gibson, but immediately recon- 

1. See Encyclopedia of Mississippi History, Leake's Administration. 



— 14 — 

sidered the vote, on motion of M. Haile, and next day passed 
the bill for removal, with Vicksburg as the lucky town, by 
a vote of 20 to 16. No change was made, however. In 
the same year H. Billingsley, H. Long, Samuel U. Puckett, 
Daniel Wafford, William Matthews and Hiram Coffee pro- 
posed to build on Capitol square at Jackson, a^ State house 
to be worth $50,000, for which they would take the entire 
two sections of land donated by the United States, including 
the town of Jackson, and the additional land purchased by 
the State, in lieu of the lots already sold. This would' be 
figured at $20,000 and the State would pay the balance in 
three annual installments of $10,000. The proposition was 
not accepted. But a State House, as has been seen, was pro- 
vided for the capital and the constitutional convention of 
1832 was held therein, the constitution establishing the cap- 
ital at Jackson until the year 1850, after which the legisla- 
ture was empowered to designate the permanent seat of 
government." 

Time has proved that the commissioners were right 
in selecting an ideal site for the capital of the state. The 
fact that it is only thirty-five miles south of the center 
of the state was greatly in its favor. The first State House 
built in the new capital was a small two-story building erec- 
ted on the site that is now occupied by the Harding Building, 
which belongs to the Baptists of Mississippi. Here the con- 
stitutional convention was held. It was the first State con- 
stitution in which the new county of Hinds had participat- 
ed and its delegates were David Dickson, James Scott, and 
Vernon Hicks. The reception of General Andrew Jackson 
in 1828 and the nomination of Robert J. Walker for the 
United States Senate were other notable events that oc- 
cured in this building. 

After another heated controversy in which Clinton 
fought strenously for supremacy,^ the capital still re- 
mained on the banks of Pearl River, having, as has been 
stated, received the name Jackson in honor of General 
Andrew Jackson, of whom Mississippians were justly 

1. Only one vote, cast by Bailey Peyton in favor of Jackson, deter- 
mined the contest. 



— 15 — 

proud. The place before the location of the capital was 
known as LeFleurs Bluff, Enochs' factory being the site 
of the trading post of Louis LeFleur. The story of its 
growth forms a part of this history. 

The county of Hinds, as it exists today, has a land sur- 
face of 847 square miles and is slightly irregular in shape. It 
is bounded on the north by Yazoo and Madison counties, 
on the east by Madison and Rankin counties, on the south 
by Copiah, and on the west by Claiborne and Warren coun- 
ties. 

The now extinct villages of Hamburg, Amsterdam, 
Antibank, and Auburn P. O., were among the earlier set- 
tlements in the county. Hamburg, laid out in 1826, had 
a brief career of only two years. Its site, on; the Big 
Black river, two miles north of the present Alabama & 
Vicksburg railroad crossing, was too marshy for a perma- 
nent town. Amsterdam was located on the bluffs two miles 
above Hamburg, and became a village of importance. Dur- 
ing high water each year it was visited by steam and keel 
boats, and was made a port of entry by act of Congress. 
About 1832 half of its population died of cholera, but the 
place continued to hold first place in commercial import- 
ance for several years. Doak's Stand, the old treaty 
ground, was the first county seat and for a short time 
Clinton was the county seat. On February 4, 1828, the 
legislature ordered the election of five commissioners to 
locate a site for the courthouse, and; they were directed to 
place it in Clinton or within two miles of the center of the 
county. The center, however, was found within two miles 
of Raymond and this was marked by a large stone. The 
following year by act of the Legislature Raymond was 
made the county seat, its prestige causing the remark that 
Raymond was the seat of justice, Clinton, of learning, and 
Amsterdam, of commerce. Clinton has made good her title, 
Amsterdam expired beneath the double calamity of an 
epidemic of cholera and failing to attract the new railroad 
coming from Vicksburg in her direction, while Raymond 
still shares the honor of being a seat of justice and many 



— 16 — 

of the old county records are still kept in her repositories. 
At this place the Hinds County Gazette had its birth. The 
county being divided into two districts, courts are today 
held at both Raymond and Jackson, the latter place having 
been selected as the capital of the state by the legislature, 
November 28, 1821. 

Among the United States senators of Mississippi from 
Hinds County before the Civil War were Walter Leake and 
Henry S. Foote. The governors of Mississippi from Hinds 
County before the war were Walter Leake, John I. Guion j 
and Henry S. Foote, and of these more will be said later. 

Hinds County, along with the other counties of the 
State, shared the prosperity that marked the State's 
financial history during these years. Cotton, the great 
staple industry, held first place in agricultural products, 
and about this time Mississippi was largely furnishing the 
country with cotton for clothing and numerous other pur- 
poses. No county in the State was making greater pro- 
gress in the growth of cotton and other products such as 
corn, peas, syrup, and great varietis of fruits than Hinds. 
Though Hinds at that time had no factories to speak of, a 
coarse cloth, woven on hand looms, shoes, and many other 
necessaries were manufactured on the large plantations 
for home consumption, such place taking on the air of 
small industrial colonies. The county began early to pro- 
duce all the food stuffs used by the people and it has 
been handed down as a fact that elegant dinners were 
given on plantations in the county which were prepared en- 
tirely of its products. It was as early as 1823 that Gov- 
ernor Leake built at Clinton, then called Mount Salus, a 
handsome brick house. The brick, or else the frame house 
with its large Grecian columns, was the accustomed style 
of house erected on the large plantations, this style of 
architecture having become popular throughout the South. 

It was during these early years that railroads became 
a subject of the liveliest interest in the history of Hinds 
County, but few having been built, the stage with its relay 
of fresh horses was maintained on many routes. One of 



— 17 — 

the earliest railroads built in the county was what is now 
the Alabama & Vicksburg. Its coming was an event 
celebrated everywhere in the county. This road, before 
the Civil War, owned and operated a branch line from Bol- 
ton to Raymond, wholly in Hinds County, but it was torn 
up and abandoned at the close of the war in order to obtain 
rails sufficient to rehabilitate the main line. 

The religious life of the county was, if anything, more 
marked and characteristic than any other feature of its 
social progress. Though nearly all of the Virginia set- 
tlers were communicants of the Church of England, the 
difficult service of the Episcopal Church prevented that 
church from spreading and the simpler rituals of the 
Methodist and Baptist churches were best suited for the 
use of a pioneer people of varied religious creeds. However, 
both the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches entered the 
county early and established themselves, though in a small 
way, securely, wherever they appeared. 

While the better class of people, especially the slave- 
holders, exhibited a manner and spirit touched with aristo- 
cratic hauteur, they possessed a deep inward piety which 
was generally expressed with much emotionalism, especial- 
ly on the part of the uneducated; shouting caused by re- 
ligious fervor and ecstasy was common to both white and 
black, and among the poorer whites the "holy dance" was 
often indulged. Every neighborhood had its frame church 
— in some instances classical in design — where not only the 
monthly Sunday service was held, but where protracted 
meetings were carried on for a week or more, all day ser- 
vices, with dinner at the church, being frequently held. 
During these revivals, generally held in midsummer after 
the crops were 'laid by,"i attended by both white and 
black, the latter occupying a gallery built in the back part 
of the church for their especial use, the people often gave 
way to religious emotions of the most remarkable nature. 
At the close of the revival each candidate for baptism was 

1, A colloquial expression still used today, meaning- that the crops 
had been cultivated, awaiting fruition. 



— 18 — 

expected to give a faithful account of his or her experience 
which often consisted of psychic discoverLas, such as few 
spiritualists of today have experienced. The women of the 
South, even where they themselves maintained serenity and 
poise in their spiritual experiences, regarded these revela- 
tions with a reverent spirit. The men sometimes took 
them with a grain of salt, but as a whole were deeply im- 
pressed with religious manifestations, and the people of no 
section of the Union more earnestly exhibited depend- 
ence on divine Providence than the people of whom we 
write, nor exppsssed in their daily lives more reverence for 
the Bible. 

The men of Hinds County, in common with those of 
the entire State, early developed a genius for politics and 
public speaking, and rallies, with barbecues and open-air 
dances, were features of the social life of the county. 
While its women as a whole were given to the study of so- 
cial and domestic questions these were not lacking in keen 
interest in public affairs and many were brilliant in conver- 
sation. 

Such was the growth of this transplanted Anglo-Saxon 
stock, and one versed in ethnology could easily trace its 
kinship to the inhabitants of the British Isles. 

The history of the county during the period preced- 
ing the Civil War is one of constant growth and expansion 
along all lines. While its people, as representatives of the 
county, took no part in the War of 1812 for American In- 
dependence, many of the sturdy pioneer soldiers who served 
under Generals Andrew Jackson and Ferdinand L. Claiborne, 
and Colonel Thomas Hinds, had moved into the new terri- 
tory, purchased from the Indians, and their sons, inherit- 
ing the cavalier's courage and chivalrous spirit, were keen 
and eager to respond when in 1846 a call came for 
volunteers to hasten to the Rio Grande to strength- 
en General Zachary Taylor's army during the War 
with Mexico. Companies E and G were immediate- 
ly organized in Hinds County. From her large brown 
loam plantations, from her small hillside farms, 
from her white, many-columned houses, and 



— 19 — 

from her little houses where the lilac and syringa bloomed 
by the low window-sill, her young sons, forgetting caste, rank 
and profession, answered the call of country, just as their 
fathers had done when the British attempted to invade the 
South in 1814-15, during the War of 1812. Company G 
was commanded by Captain Reuben N. Downing, with Wil- 
liam H. Hampton and S. A. D. Graves, lieutenants. Com- 
pany E was commanded by Captain John L. McManus, with 
James H. Hughes and Crawford Fletcher, lieutenants. 
Worthy and honored descendants of these brave soldiers 
may still be found in the county's population. 

Companies E and G formed a part of the famous First 
Mississippi Regiment for the Mexican War, commanded by 
Colonel Jefferson Davis, with Alexander K. McClung, Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel and A. B. Bradford, Major. The courage 
and valor of this regiment at Buena Vista and Monterey 
have placed its deeds in the class with the most renowned 
military feats of history. After a year's absence the regi- 
ment returned home, to receive the plaudits of an admiring 
people. Its welcome home was a statewide event and will 
be referred to again in this sketch. 

But military honors, political preferment and social di- 
version were not all that the happy, prosperous people of this 
fast-developing region sought. The county has always led 
in educational aspiration and advancement. As early as 
1826 the Hemstead Academy, afterwards by an act ap- 
proved February 5, 1827, called Mississippi Academy, 
was incorporated and located at Clinton, then Mount Salus. 
In 1827 under the guidance of F. G. Hopkins it began a use- 
ful, though changeful, career. A lottery, an institution 
not then viewed with the disapproval it is today, was 
authorized by the trustees for its support. The Hinds 
county college, at Clinton, after having failed by one vote 
to become the property of the Methodists of Mississippi, 
passed to the control of the Mississippi! Presbytery, to be 
finally transferred to the Baptists, becoming the sole 
property of the Baptist Church in Mississippi and known 
throughout the United States as Mississippi College. Its 



— 20 — 

history has been one of marvelous growth and influence in 
the State. Many other strong educational institutions 
have been established in the county to which reference will 
be made. 

It was about 1840 that the county began to enjoy its 
first railroad facilities, the prcdecessors of the present 
Alabama & Vicksburg railroad giving much-needed trans- 
portation and connecting it with the Mississippi River at the 
city of Vicksburg. The first census report made by John 
A. Grimball, secretary of state, gives the county a popula- 
tion of 5,340 in 1832. In 1900 it had increased to 52,577. 

A favored region from the standpoint of climate and 
fertile acreage, settled under the most favorable conditions 
by a better class than usually seeks the frontiers, with a 
well-established state government upon which to lean and 
possessing the means with which to begin the foundations of 
a well-ordered society, Hinds County did not meet with the 
misfortunes, hazards and catastrophes that mark earlier 
southern and western settlements ; still, obstacles await any 
conquerors of the wilderness. It was true that lurking foes 
plotting the sudden massacre had disappeared, but it is a 
far cry from dense forests through which no road runs to 
the apple orchard, the church and the school-house. How- 
ever, history attests that the county grew by leaps and 
bounds. 

The general development and progress of Hinds 
County, which were so marked during the period preceding 
the Civil War, were due to a large extent to the fact that 
the capital of the State was located within its borders. 
Activities of a varied nature found an outlet here. Many 
large institutions, both industrial and educational, sought 
the capital city, and the whole political history of the 
State colored its history. Since the day of the location of 
the capital, it began to be recognized as the center of state 
affairs, and indeed the rich section throughout this region 
before the Civil War was a fitting support for any state 
capital. Here the slave-holder had amassed large fortunes ; 
villages, towns, and cities sprang up, and churches, schools 



— 21 — 

and play-houses were erected, if not plentifully in growing 
numbers, for the use of as prosperous and happy people as 
existed anywhere in the United States. Politics, both 
State and national, engaged the thoughts of the people to 
a large extent in this county and it was during these years 
that the gifted and erudite Henry S. Foote met such 
past masters as Jefferson Davis and S. S. Prentiss in ora- 
torical contests. 

Among the leaders of public affairs in Hinds County at 
this period were Henry S. Foote,^ William and George Yer- 
ger, William L. Sharkey, Amos R. Johnston, Albert G. 
Brown, T. J. Walton, Fulton Anderson, Wiley P. Harris, 
David C. Glenn and John I. Guion. 



CHAPTER II 

Questions in national government were now clamoring 
for settlement which remaining unsettled too long by gov- 
ernmental procedure, culminated in the secession of the 
Southern States, followed by as fierce civil war between 
the sections of the cleft Union as history has ever record- 
ed. For the preliminary events of secession in Mississippi, 
a close study is recommended of the administrations of 
Matthews, Guion, Whitfield, Foote, McRae, McWillie and 
Pettus. See Encyclopedia of Mississippi History, Volumes 
I and H. 

As a reflex of the situation, in Hinds County, 
which was the compendium of that throughout the State, 
a brief summary with some slight editing will be inserted 
here from the Encyclopedia of Mississippi History since the 
act of secession was enacted within the confines of the 
county and is a part of its history. 

'Tor many years after the formation of the Republic 
few would have questioned the legal theory upon which 
the Southern Commonwealths based their right to with- 
draw from the Union, whatever resistance might have been 

1. Foote resigned when governor of the State in 1851 and went to 
California and from there to Tennessee. 



— 22 — 

offered to actual withdrawal. The wise men of 
1787 were forced to appease many jealousies and 
to adjust many delicate situations before the con- 
stitution could win the necessary support to insure 
its adoption by the States. This brought about 
the many well known compromises of the constitu- 
tion, together with some significant omissions in the in- 
strument. If the right of secession was nowhere mention- 
ed, neither was it negatived; nor was there anywhere a 
grant of power to the National government to coerce a re- 
calcitrant State. The prevailing early view of the consti- 
tution and the nature of the Union is well illustrated in the 
Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798 ; in the attitude 
of those New England States which condemned the embargo 
laid upon shipping by the National government in 1808, de- 
clared it unconstitutional and refused to enforce it; in 
1812, when Massachusetts and Connecticut refused to 
honor the requisition of the President for the use of ihe 
militia of those States without their borders, on the ground 
that the act of Congress authorizing the requisition was un- 
constitutional ; in 1828-30, when Georgia refused to obey an 
act of Congress regarding the Cherokee Indians, and de- 
fied the Federal authority ; and finally in 1832, when South 
Carolina through State convention and by legislative en- 
actment declared null and void the tariff imposed by Con- 
gress, and was prepared to secede if necessary. All these 
incidents serve to show that the secession idea was no new 
one. Those States which finally seceded in 1861 justified 
their course by the claim that the National Union was 
formed by a compact between independent States, each of 
which could judge for itself, whether the compact had been 
violated, and secede for such violation. A State, by vir- 
tue of its individual, sovereign right, could repeal or with- 
draw its act of acceptance of the constitution, as the basis 
or bond of union, and resume the powers which had been 
delegated and enumerated in that instrument. This action 
was that of the people of the State, in the assertion of a 
power above that of Federal or State government. 

"Apart from the legal grounds upon which the right 



— 23 — 

of secession was based, the interests of the North and the 
South had grown widely apart. In the progress of the 
years the social and economic development of the two sec- 
tions had diverged more and more." Though there were a 
number of abolitionists in the South,i ^fter the fashion 
of Henry Clay's class, the South as a whole, for the pres- 
ent at least, felt that slavery was not only in keeping with 
Biblical institutions but an indispensible economic necessity 
in the production of its great staples, cotton and tobacco — 
products which were the mainstay of her prosperity; that 
since the constitution provided for its existence, only con- 
stitutional measures could or should prevent it ; that it was 
pernicious intermeddling for the New England reformers 
to condemn its practice when New England had recognized 
it herself but a few years before, and in finding such labor 
more of a burden than otherwise to a largely sterile sec- 
tion, had sold her slaves to the southern planters. 

"Many events had tended to intensify the feeling be- 
tween the sections. The South resented the charge of moral 
guilt for the original introduction of slavery. There was 
certainly no basis for this charge, as the South was no more 
responsible than the North. The commercial policy of Eng- 
land denied the colonies any choice in the matter; they 
were obliged to permit the slave-trade and to receive the 
slaves. Before the year 1808 when the Federal constitu- 
tion authorized Congress to act in the matter, all the lead- 
ing Southern States had voluntarily abolished the foreign 
slave-trade. It is a fact familiar to all southerners that 
the South only tolerated the domestic slave-trade, as the 
means for the proper economic distribution of the slave pop- 
ulation. General hatred, and social ostracism were the lot of 
the slave-trader, who was more often of New England birth 
than Southern born. Again, the South believed that the 
people of the North condoned, if they had not actually 
abetted the diabolical acts of the fanatical and blood-thirsty 
John Brown. Every southerner realized what a hideous 

1. There was in active operation in Mississippi before the Civil AVar 
a strong society for the emancipation and colonization of the Negro in 
Liberia. The colony planted there bore the name of Mississippiana. 
Captain Isaac Ross in his will gave all his slaves their freedom. 



— 24 — 

danger a slave insurrection meant to southern homes. The 
South too felt and demanded that slavery was entitled to 
statutory protection wherever it existed in the Territories 
in obedience to the law as enunciated in the Dred Scott 
decision. The failure of many of the northern States to en- 
force the provisions of the fugitive slave law was espe- 
cially exasperating. 

"Mississippi was represented by a brilliant delegation 
when the Democratic national convention met at Charles- 
ton, April 23rd, including Jeiferson Davis, W. S. Barry, L. 
Q. C. Lamar, Charles Clark, Jacob Thompson, J. W. Mat- 
thews and S. J. Gholson. The delegation reported the de- 
mand of Yancey, that the platform must declare for pro- 
tection by Congress of slave property, the attitude to which 
the Southern Democrats had advanced from non-interven- 
tion. This was simply a demand for strict compliance with 
the doctrine of the Dred Scott decision. 

"The Northwestern Democrats, mainly, rejected this 
principle and a platform was adopted which left slavery to 
the voice of the inhabitants of the territories, which 
was the Douglas policy.^ Thereupon the delegations of 
Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Texas, and scattering 
members of other delegations, seceded from the conven- 
tion. The convention ballotted 57 times, but Douglas failed 
to receive a two-thirds vote, and it then adjourned to meet 
at Baltimore June 18. Jefferson Davis opposed this rup- 
ture, 'because he knew we could achieve a more solid and 
enduring triumph by remaining in and defeating Douglas 
* * * But there was no holding back such men as General 
Clark, Thompson, Matthews and Judge Gholson. They 
forced Alabama to stand to their instructions and then stood 
by her.' (Letter of Lamar to Mott, May 29th). Afterward 
Mr. Davis sent out an address advising the return of the 
delegates to Baltimore, and Lamar signed it with him. 

"At Baltimore, Mississippi and South Carolina refused 
to participate unless all the delegates from the seceding 

1. Under the laws of the United States the territories had no author- 
ity to enact laws of this nature; every issue opposed by the South in- 
volved an infring-ement of the national constitution. 



— 25 — 

states were admitted. There were contests, decided against 
the anti-Douglas men, and the Southern party again seceded. 
The remainder of the convention nominated Douglas for 
president. The Southern party met at Richmond, adjourned 
back to Baltimore, and there, in June, nominated 
Breckenridge. Meanwhile, in May, the Constitutional Union 
party, identical with the Foote party in Mississippi, had held 
a convention at Baltimore and nominated John Bell, of 
Tennessee. It was mainly a Southern party, in fact, but had 
hopes of national support. The Republican party had a con- 
vention at Chicago in May also, and nominated Abraham 
Lincoln. Thus there were two Northern and two Southern 
parties. Both sets were divided on the old Whig and 
Democrat issues, but in the South the actual issue betwean 
the Beckenridge and Bell parties, was secession, as the elec- 
tion of Lincoln was considered certain. 

*Tn Mississippi the Bell men denounced the Democrats 
as having always bred dissension and never having done 
anything to heal it. If Breckenridge and Douglas were 
the only candidates the issue would be the same, they said. 
The Natchez Courier (Whig) declared the Breckenridge 
ticket was supported by Southern sectionalism and 
Buchanan corruption. It asked, 'Will you follow Yancey 
and his clique in their mad scheme of precipitating the 
cotton States into a revolution and bring upon yourselves 
the horrors and desolation of civil war?' 

''When Congress adjourned, 'Members from the South 
purchased long-range guns to take home with them,' says 
Reuben Davis. 'The unthinking among them rejoiced that 
the end was in sight, but those who considered more deeply 
were dismayed by the prospect. It was regarded as almost 
certain that Lincoln would be elected, unless Breckenridge 
or Douglas could be withdrawn from the field, and it was 
idle to hope that this could be done.' Giddings, of Ohio, a 
famous Abolitionist, demanded a candidate in opposition 
to Lincoln, but that movement had little strength in the 
North. 'The presidential campaign was, as was inevitable, 
one of extraordinary violence.' 

"The Breckenridge electoral ticket was headed by 



— 26 — 

Henry T. Ellett. The Bell ticket was, John C. Watson, 
Amos R. Johnston, the last of Hinds County, T. B. Mosely, 
William A. Shaw, W. B. Helm, Sylvanus Evans, Gustavus 
H. Wilcox. The Douglas ticket was, Samuel Smith, Frank- 
lin Smith, B. N. Kinyon, R. W. Flournoy, E. Dismukes, 
Henry Calhoun, Edmund McAllister. The campaign was 
characterized, as it was in the North, by considerable mili- 
tary parade. The Union party had its big rallies, at 
Natchez, Jackson, Vicksburg, and elsewhere, as well as the 
Democrats, and there were many torch light processions. 
There was a Union meeting ini Jackson, early in October, 
under the management of Fulton Anderson, Chief Justice 
Sharkey, the Yergers, R. L. Buck and many other prominent 
men. But there was not much doubt as to what the result 
would be. In October the Union men, knowing the settled 
program, were calling attention to the resolutions of the 
convention of 1851, that a convention was illegal, without 
first letting the people vote on the calling of it. 

"Mississippi gave an overwhelming majority to 
Breckenridge. According to the constitutional method of 
election, provided to protect the States from consolidation, 
Mr. Lincoln was assured of 180 electoral votes, far more 
than all his opponents together. Bell carried 39 votes, 
Breckenridge 72, Douglas 12. The popular vote of the 
United States was by no means so decisive. Lincoln re- 
ceived 1,866,452 votes; Douglas 1,375,157; Breckenridge, 
847,953; Bell, 590,631. The great vote for Douglas was in 
the North. The opposition vote to the Republicans was 
2,823,741 — a majority of almost a million, in a total 
vote of about four million and a half. The op- 
position to Lincoln had polled 1,288,611 in the North and 
West alone. In Lincoln's own state, Illinois, the opposi- 
tion vote only lacked three thousand of that polled by the 
Republicans. It was really a narrow victory, and it was 
the part of wisdom for the Republican leaders to move cau- 
tiously. 

"Lincoln had said positively in 1858 in the fa- 
mous debate with Stephen A. Douglas: T am not nor 



— 27 — 

ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of ne- 
groes, nor to qualify them to hold office, nor to inter- 
marry with white people, and I will say in addition to 
this, that there is a physical difference between the white 
and black races, which I believe will forever forbid the two 
races living together on terms of social and political equal- 
ity.' This did not suit the abolitionists of the North who 
believed in the social and political equality of the races; 
hence, the light vote Lincoln received. After his election, 
however, it was generally accepted and largely true that 
he would be dominated by the radical element of the Re- 
publican party. 

''November 13th, 1860, Governor Pettus issued a 
proclamation that, 'Whereas, the recent election of Messrs. 
Lincoln and Hamlin demonstrates that those who neither 
reverence the Constitution, obey the laws, nor reverence 
their oaths, have now the power to elect to the highest of- 
fices in this Confederacy men who sympathize with them in 
all their mad zeal to destroy the peace, prosperity and prop- 
erty of the Southern section, and will use the power of the 
Federal government to defeat all the purposes for which it 
was formed; and whereas, the dearest rights of the people 
depend for protection under our constitution on the fidelity 
to their oaths of those who administer the government,' he 
called the legislature to provide 'surer and better safeguards 
for the lives, liberties and property of her citizens than have 
been found, or are hoped for in Black Republican oaths.' 
Gov. Pettus also invited the Congressional delegation to 
meet him in conference at Jackson. All attended but Mc- 
Rae. Diverse opinions were maintained. Some opposed 
separate State action in secession. Some were opposed to 
secession, unless eight other States would consent to go out 
at the same time. Finally General Reuben Davis proposed 
that the governor should recommend a convention to adopt 
an ordinance of secession to take effect immediately. This 
was carried by the votes of Governor Pettus, 0. R. Singleton, 
William Barksdale and Reuben Davis. The governor then 
showed the conference a telegram from the governor of 
South Carolina asking advice as to whether the South Caro- 



— 28 — 

lina ordinance should take effect immediately or on the 4th 
of March, and the same four votes were cast to give the 
advice 'immediately.' (R. Davis, Recollections, 390. Also 
see Mayes' Lamar, p. 87). 

"When the legislature convened at Jackson, November 
26, the message of the governor was immediately delivered. 
Besides the members and all State officials, hundreds of 
citizens of Hinds County were present, the galleries of the 
old Capitol and all available standing room being packed 
with eager, anxious spectators. He declared they had be- 
fore them 'the greatest and most solemn question that ever 
engaged the attention of any legislative body on this con- 
tinent,' one that involved 'the destiny, for weal or for woe, 
of this age, and all generations that come after us, for an 
indefinite . number of generations, the end of which no 
prophet can foretell ***** That Mississippi may be en- 
abled to speak on this grave subject in her sovereign ca- 
pacity I recommend that a convention be called, to meet 
at an early date.' He argued at length the doctrine of a 
reserved right of secession by the States of the Union, and 
declared that this was the great saving principle to which 
alone the Southern States could look and live. In after 
years he said he hoped, after the Republican party had 
passed away, to come back 'under the benign influences of 
a reunited government.' 'If we falter now,' he said in con- 
clusion, 'we or our sons must pay the penalty in future 
years, of bloody, if not fruitless, efforts to retrieve the 
fallen fortunes of the State, which if finally unsuccessful 
must leave our fair land blighted — cursed with Black Re- 
publican politics and the freed negro's morals, to become 
a cesspool of vice, crime and infamy. Can we hesitate, 
when one bold resolve, bravely executed, makes powerless 
the aggressor, and one united effort makes safe our homes? 
May the God of our fathers put it into the hearts of our 
people to make it.' Among the members of the legislature 
a written plan of a Confederacy was freely circulated and 
published in the Mississippian of December 4th. This be- 
gan with the following instructions:' 'The States of South 
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida are believed to be 



— 29 — 

ready to go out of the Union. To these states, let com- 
missioners be appointed now by the State.' 

"On November 28th the legislature passed the Con- 
vention bill, reported by Charles Clark in the house. It 
provided that an election of delegates to a convention 
should be helc^ in each county, Thursday, December 20th, 
each county to have as many delegates as it had represen- 
tatives in the legislature. Originally the bill would have 
allowed any 'citizen' to be a delegate, but the senate insert- 
ed an amendment requiring one year's residence in the State. 
The delegates elected were to meet at the Capitol, Monday, 
January 7, 1861, and 'proceed to consider the then existing 
relations between the government of the United States and 
the government and people of the State of Mississippi, and to 
adopt such measures of vindicating the sovereignty of the 
State, and the protection of its institutions as shall appear 
to them to be demanded.' 

''On the following day resolutions were adopted re- 
questing the governor to appoint Conimissioners 'to visit 
each of the slave-holding Stat>3S,' to inform them of the 
action of the Mississippi legislature, 'express the earnest 
hope of Mississippi that those States will co-operate with 
her in the adoption of efficient measures for their common 
defence and safety,' and appeal to the governors to call the 
legislature into extra session where that had not been done. 
Another resolution requested the State officers to prepare 
a device for a coat of arms for the State of Mississippi; to 
be ready by the 7th of January. Delay was not to the taste 
of the legislature. Senator Buck's resolve that it would not 
be proper to take final action without consultation with the 
sister slave-holding States, was lost, 27 to 3. The resolu- 
tions adopted by a large majority, after reciting the 
grounds for complaint, said, 'That in the opinion of those 
who now constitute the State legislature, the secession of 
each aggrieved State is the proper remedy for these in- 
juries.' The legislature adjourned November 30. 

"The governor appointed the following commissioners, 
who visited the other States, and addressed the legislatures 



— 30 — 

and people : Henry Dickinson, to Delaware ; A. H. Handy, to 
Maryland; Walker Brooke and Fulton Anderson, to Vir- 
ginia; Jacob Thompson, to North Carolina; G. S. Gaines, to 
Florida; W. L. Harris and Thomas W. White, to Georgia; 
W. S. Featherston, to Kentucky; Thomas J. Wharton, of 
Hinds County, to Tennessee ; Joseph W. Matthews, to Ala- 
bama; Daniel R. Russell, to Missouri; George R. Fall, to 
Arkansas; Wirt Adams, of Hinds County, to Louisiana; 
H. H. Miller, to Texas ; C. E. Hooker, of Hinds County, to ■ 
South Carolina. Mississippi was herself visited by like 
commissioners. Colonel Armistead, from South Carolina, 
and E. W. Fettus, brother of the governor, from Alabama, 
attended the January convention.'' 

The decisive step taken by the governor of Mississippi 
at Jackson stirred the people throughout the State. Hinds 
County and the capital city became the Mecca for all the 
determined secessionists of the State. The anti-seces- 
sionists, however, had a following in the county, since 
Foote had lived here and had built up a strong party. But 
in-espective of partisanship, there was a wholly unselfish 
and sincere effort in the county made by such able leaders 
as Judge W. L. Sharkey to hold the Union together, to 
which policy Jefferson Davis clung until it was clearly mani- 
fest that all reason had fled the councils of both the North 
and the South and that it was now a bitter and deep-seated 
contention over constitutional guarantees that separated the 
people. As for the question of freeing the slaves, there 
were, we repeat, numerous abolitionists in Mississippi and 
throughout the South, but the voices of these were quelled 
for the time being at least by the cotton growers who consti- 
tuted the gentry of the State. And who honestly doubts 
that the reformer of New England would not have been 
crushed for some time to come had the sterile soil of New 
England been a rich one adapted to the production of such 
profitable staples as cotton and tobacco? By what pro- 
cesses of economic development involving self-interest the 
New Englander became an abolitionist en masse would 
make interesting history, when we consider that there was 
a time not far back that rabid spirits among them tarred 



— 31 — 

and feathered and often mobbed their neighbors for per- 
nicious interference in such pubhc questions as the preven- 
tion of slavery. As for the institution itself, there remains 
to be written a truthful history of the Africans' develop- 
ment and improvement from a savage during the period 
of slavery in the Southern States. It is a long distance to 
go from a life in the open, engaged in the art of trapping 
a lizard or snaring a snake for sustaining a purely animal 
existence, to the altar and hearthstone and the hand that 
guided the feet of this infant race and shielded it when 
unable to stand alone, should not be forgotten by the his- 
torian. 

Returning to my subject, secession in the State of 
Mississippi was, in addition to its underlying seriousness, 
accompanied with an outward display of romantic fervor 
that savored of the days of chivalry. As has been observed 
by the writer in a former article, the history of the 
world has furnished no more remarkable occasion than this 
presented, nor groups upon its page a no more unusual body 
than that which gathered in the Representative Hall of the 
old State Capitol of Mississippi on the morning of January 
7, 1861. 

The convention brought a group of brilliant men to 
the State capital, every section of the commonwealth being 
represented. Immediately after convening, it appointed a 
committee to draft an ordinance of secession, from its 
ablest leaders, and young L. Q. C. Lamar was made chair- 
man. When the ordinance had been read and approved, 
intense excitement prevailed, in the midst of which a large, 
blue silk flag, containing a single white star, was brought 
into the convention. The emblem had been made, evidently 
for the present occasion, by Mrs. Homer Smythe, of Hinds 
County. 

The Irish comedian, McCarthy, who was filling an en- 
gagement at the Jackson theatre, on witnessing the thrilling 
scene, returned to his room and wrote the first three verses 
of the famous song entitled, "The Bonnie Blue Flag." These 
verses were printed by Col. J. L. Power in a city 



— 32 — 

paper and next day set to music and a week 
later were heard in New Orleans, soon finding their 
way throughout the country, gaining additional ver- 
ses in other Southern States. The same conven- 
tion that passed the ordinance of secession made immediate 
preparation for war. Jefferson Davis was placed in com- 
mand of the army of Mississippi. In the personnel of the 
secession convention, Hinds county furnished Wiley P. 
Harris, W. P. Anderson and B. S. Smart. 

The history of Hinds County during the four years of 
the War for Southern Indepsndence is closely inter- 
woven with the history of the city of Jackson, 
which is largely similar to that of many of the 
war-swept cities of Virginia and of many other Southern 
States during this crisis. The city was partially burned 
twice, and the surrounding country laid waste during 
Grant's second invasion of the State in 1863 when Vicks- 
burg was besieged and captured. The county as well as 
the city was in a state of constant excitement and action 
for much of the time throughout the war and every re- 
source it commanded was generously expended in main- 
taining the Confederacy. It was during this crisis in the 
history of the county that its women manifested a spirit 
that has given them, a secure place in the history of the 
southern woman, for nowhere in the South were 
they more efficient and helpful and responsive to pub- 
lic duty than in Hinds County, Mississippi, and 
throughout the State as well. The economic interests of 
the country were largely in their keeping; the crops were 
planted, tended, gathered and sold largely under their di- 
rection throughout the war, during which time they devel- 
oped a genius for economy and conservation unequalled in 
the history of the women of any nation. And when one 
considers under what trying and perplexing conditions she 
met her heavy responsibilities, the war often at her very 
door-sill, and the slaves left in her care being rendered 
restless and disloyal by the invading foe, the poise she 
maintained as a whole can be accounted for in no other way 



— 33 — 

but that she had drunk deeply of the divine fountains that 
nourished her civilization. 

The military organizations of the county during the 
Civil War which had grown to be strong and it is admitted 
prideful, consisted of such famous companies as the Burt 
Rifles, Raymond Fencibles, Company A of Withers' Artil- 
lery, Brown Rebels, Mississippi College Rifles, Downing 
Rifles and Raymond Minute Men. As each of these com- 
panies joined their regiments, parades, public speak- 
ing, and the presentation of Company flags occurred 
frequently in the city of Jackson and throughout the coun- 
ty. Besides this quota of splendid young troops, officered 
by such commanders as E. R. Burt, Edward Fontaine, James 
C. Campbell and Joseph F. Sessions ; William H. Taylor and 
Cuddy Thomas; Samuel J. Ridley and W. T. Ratliff ; Albert 
G. Brown, John F. Rimes and Robert Y. Brown; Johnson 
W. Welborn and William H. Lewis; Thomas A. Mellon and 
William E. Ratliff; and Skilt B. McCowan, all of Hinds 
County, the county also gave to the Confederacy General 
Wirt Adams and General Richard Griffith. 

Many of the Hinds County troops served in Virginia 
during the war. General Griffith being mortally wounded 
at the battle of Seven Pines near Richmond. His portrait 
has not only been placed in the Mississippi Hall of Fame, 
but hangs in the portrait gallery in Richmond. 

During the year 1863 when thq resources of the Con- 
federacy were well-nigh exhausted. Hinds County became 
an almost solid battleground. In the path Sherman made 
through it from the south in Grant's second advance on 
Vicksburg lie a succession of battlefields than which no 
more historic ground can be found in America. The broken 
uplands lying between Jackson and Vicksburg in Hinds 
and Warren counties were the scene of action after the de- 
structive march northward from Bruinsburg and Port Gibson 
The battle near Raymond, the burning of Jackson, the battles 
of Champion Hill and Baker's creek, the one of Big Black 
bridge, and the stubborn resistance of Vicksburg, form the 
memorable campaign that wrecked the Confederacy in the 



— 34 — 

lower South. In the invasion of Sherman, whose methods 
of warfare were similar in some respects to thoso of Ger- 
many in the great World War, the county was devastated, 
its homes burned, its food-stuffs and live-stock consumed 
or destroy«3d. 

It is said by a reliable authority that when General 
Grant viewed the wrecked country from the front porch of 
a captured residence, he exclaimed in aghast and sympa- 
thetic tones, "What were the people of this beautiful coun- 
try thinking of to go to war?" When hostilities ceased 
Hinds County was exhausted of every resource, with a 
burned capital on its hands for restoration, and her wide 
plantations, on which were empty barns and few horses and 
mules, wholly unprovided with reliable labor. To add to 
the gloomy condition, a despotic military government was 
instituted by Congress in the Southern States, from which 
Mississippi suffered, perhaps, as much as any State in the 
Union, much of the misfortune and catastrophe having 
Hinds county for the stage. 

CHAPTER HI 

A brief resume of the political events of the years 
directly following the War for Southern Independence will 
be given here as a reflex of what was taking place in this 
county and throughout the State. 

At the outset on the cessation of hostilities Abraham 
Lincoln said, and it is safe to think it would have been his 
policy, ''Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to re- 
storing the proper political relations between those States 
and the Union." How far he might have yielded to the 
demands of the extremists of his own party is a matter 
for conjecture. A close study of his life seemingly reveals 
a certain weakness when contending with the strong, deep- 
ly prejudiced forces of his party. 

In the articles of capitulation Jefferson Davis had sug- 
gested certain plans and stipulations through Johnston, 
which had been agreed to by Sherman. These were im- 



— 35 — 

mediately rejected by the United States government. In 
this plan of reconstruction the oath of allegiance and elec- 
tion of United States senators and congressmen were con- 
sidered all that was necessary for restoration in the Union, 
leaving the State government and its congressional repre- 
sentatives free to settle as they thought best all questions 
about which the people had gone to war. Charles Sumner, 
one of the most rabid and prejudiced ' partisans in the sen- 
ate, advanced a theory that the seceding States had by 
their own act lost the position of statehood and had become 
nothing more than conquered territory, and congress 
henceforth had power to do with it as it willed, and to gov- 
ern it by military form of government as long as it chose. 

This was in keeping with the policy of Thaddeus 
Stevens of Pennsylvania in which the theory was advanced 
that the State should be regarded as conquered individual 
provinces. To this influence was due the r«3Jection of the 
delegation that Mississippi sent to Congress. The mild and 
constructive policy of President Johnson and William H. 
Seward was traceable to Lincoln, while a close study of the 
policies of Sumner and Stevens reveals a desire and 
determination on the part of the jealous Puritan to crush 
the Cavalier South. It was part of a feud centuries old trans- 
planted to a new social atmosphere. 

The theory of the Mississippi legislature in 1866 
was that the moment the military and all forcible 
combinations against the laws and authority of the United 
States were overcome and Federal supremacy reinstated and 
law and civil tribunals replaced, the work of preserving the 
Union was accomplished and the States restored to their 
proper places and relation in it. 

On June 13, 1865, President Johnson appointed 
Judge William L. Sharkey of Hinds county provisional gov- 
ernor of Mississippi, who immediately issued a proclamation 
to the people in which he called a convention for framing a 
suitable constitution for the State to meet the new condi- 
tions arising out of the prohibition of slavery. Hinds 
County sent to this convention William Yerger, Amos R. 



— 36 — 

Johnston and George L. Potter. The reconstruction policy 
of President Johnson, as it applied to Mississippi, may be 
found in the Encyclopedia of Mississippi History, Sharkey's 
Administration, vol. II, page 653, and Humphrey's Admin- 
istration, vol. I, page 893. 

As bitter as their recent failure had been to establish 
Southern Independence, the people as a whole accepted the 
result calmly, asking only to be allowed to resum-e Statehood 
with as little friction as possible. General Grant was right 
after his Southern tour in saying that the people were 
anxious to set up self-government in the Union. He was 
mistaken in affirming that the people cared for military 
protection as it existed. Had it been one of honest pur- 
pose and intent, it would have proved highly beneficial, but 
its presence caused nearly all the evils arising during the 
period of reconstruction. 

The State's affairs were in a ferment and every loyal 
citizen was deeply concerned as to its future position. With 
the benefits obtained by President Johnson's policy under 
Sharkey's administration, Mississippi made another at- 
tempt to establish a government by electing Benjamin G. 
Humphreys governor with a full list of State officials. This 
constituted an honest and capable effort on the part of the 
State to reorganize State government in the Union and 
the people believed that they were once more a part of the 
national government, even though the delegation to Con- 
gress had not been recognized. The Humphreys adminis- 
tration, however, though permitted for a short time to 
exist, after military government was established, was not 
empowered with legislation. The military, now commanded 
by Gen. E. 0. C. Ord, in the Fourth District, embracing 
Hinds County, was in full control of the State. The opin- 
ion of Justice Tarbell, Welburn vs. Mayrant, 48 Miss., 653, 
was: "By no refinement of reason can we escape the fact 
that there existed in the State in 1868 a pure, undisguised 
military government and the military force was not kept 
there simply as a police force, but was sent there to govern 
as well." 



— 37 — 

''General Ord had two general duties — to preserve 
order and to provide for the registering of voters under the 
new law and an election on the question of a constitutional 
convention. The election held and convention ordered, 
General Ord, after nine months' service, asked for transfer, 
and was succeeded by General Alvin C. Gillem, who took 
command of the District embracing Hinds County, January 
8, 1868. The United States troops in the State at that 
time were the 24th and 34th Infantry and two companies 
of Cavalry, posted at Vicksburg, Meridian, Jackson, 
Natchez, Grenada, Columbus, Holly Springs, Corinth, Du- 
rant, Brookhaven and Lauderdale. Four more companies 
were brought in for fear of disorder at the elections. Gen- 
eral Gillem, it is thought, greatly relaxed the rigor of mili- 
tary rule, though hej made more appointments to civil of- 
fice than did his predecessor. The constitutional convention 
of 1868 assembled at Jackson January 9, 1868, with 17 ne- 
groes among the delegates. The delegates from Hinds 
County were Henry Mayson (negro) , E. A. Peyton, Charles 
Caldwell (negro), and John Parsons. It was, as might 
have been expected, a crude and revolutionary assemblage, 
anxious to do ,so many things that it continued in session 
115 days. The constitution it framed was submitted to 
popular vote June 22, 1868, the first time such a thing had 
been done in Mississippi. Meanwhile the Democratic party 
was reorganized, and all its strength put into the campaign 
against the constitution, and for the election of a governor 
to succeed Humphreys." 

The returned Confederate soldiers bore the changed con- 
ditions with remarkable fortitude tinged in hopeless moods 
with a dull apathy. But when the safety of the white civi- 
lization of the South was menaced, an organization known 
as the famous Ku Klux Klan was formed to protect society 
and its sacred institutions during a lawless and turbulent 
military reign, during which every effort was made to de- 
stroy the white race in the South. When the rock-beds of 
their civilization were assailed, pledged not to take up arms 
against the Union, there was no other alternative but for 
the Confederate soldiers to become a law unto themselves. 



— 38- 

The Klan that operated in Hinds County was organized 
at the State capital and drew its membership from all 
classes of the best citizens of the county. It is a mistake 
to think the Ku Klux Klan disbanded because irregularities, 
as deeply as they deplored such, were committed in their 
name. As long as the white civilization and its sacred in- 
stitutions were in danger of annihilation, the organization 
performed its functions and so soon as law and order was 
restored and a civil government instituted, they with every 
respect and confidence for this power, quietly disbanded, 
feeling that there was no need of a remedy when the disease 
had passed. 

''June 4, 1868, Gen. Gillem was succeeded in command 
of the Fourth District, by order of the president, by Gen. 
Irwin McDowell, who, unlike Ord and Gillem, had never 
been on duty in the State. On the charge of opposition to 
the Reconstruction acts, he removed Gov. Humphreys from 
office. Lieut.-Col. Adelbert Ames, of the 24th Infantry, 
(brevet major-general), was appointed provisional gover- 
nor, the function first exercised by Judge Sharkey. Other 
changes were made. State officers being supplanted by of- 
ficers of the regiments of the State garrison. (See Ames 
Prov. Adm). 

"Another day to the election date was added by Mc- 
Dowell. Before he was able to announce the result, how- 
ever, he was removed from command and Gillem reinstat- 
ed, a step which met with popular approval. 

"Gillem announced on July 10 the result of the June 
election. It showed that the constitution had been rejected. 

"Two days before the returns were completed, the Com- 
mittee of Five, of the constitutional convention, reported 
to the Reconstruction committee of congress that election 
commissioners had been unable to discharge their duties 
in some counties ; in others there was a reign of terror for 
the purpose of intimidation, and that a sort of boycott had 
been proclaimed to compel negroes to refrain from voting 
the Republican ticket. There is no doubt of the truth, to 
some extent, of all these allegations. Not more than half 



— 39 — 

the colored vote was cast. The Committee of Five re- 
quested Gen. Gillem to investigate its charges, and upon 
his refusal to do so, the committee took rooms at the capi- 
tol, and with closed doors took testimony to support its posi- 
tion. After four months the chairman of the committee 
on November 3 issued a proclamation declaring the consti- 
tution adopted by a majority of the legal votes cast, and the 
Republican State ticket elected at the same time. The 
elections in Copiah, Carroll, Chickasaw, DeSoto, Lafayette, 
Rankin and Yalobusha counties were declared to be illegal 
and void on account of threats, intimidations, frauds and 
violence. He also claimed! that two Republicans had been 
elected to the 40th congress, and impeached the title of a 
number of members of the legislature declared elected by 
Gen. Gillem. 

''Meanwhile the committee had asked congress to sup- 
port this conclusion. The House passed a bill July 24, to 
re-assemble the convention to frame a new constitution, 
but it was rejected by the senate. A Republican State 
convention was convened at Jackson, November 25, which 
memorialized congress to the same eifect, renewed the 
charges of fraud, and adopted an address declaring that a 
large party in Mississippi, in 'defiance of the authority, and 
regardless of the wishes of congress, had rejected in con- 
tempt all terms of restoration, and had assumed the right 
to dictate the terms under which they would condescend 
to be re-admitted to the Union.' Similar conventions 
were held in nearly every county. A committee of six per- 
sons from the state at large, and two from each congres- 
sional district, were sent to Washington to urge the adop- 
tion of this policy. There was a hearing before the Re- 
construction committee. Gov. Sharkey testified that the 
election was fair so far as he knew, that many negroes 
voted voluntarily with the Democrats, that there was good 
feeling between the races, and that if again submitted, 
with the proscriptive features omitted, the constitution 
would be adopted. Gen. Gillem had the same view of the 
constitution, and denied that he had opposed the reconstruc- 
tion measure, as charged against him. J. W. C. Watson 



— 40 — 

said the people, though opposed to negro suffrage, would 
have approved the constitution but for the features of white 
disfranchisement. Another Mississippi Reconstruction 
party, among the leaders of which were A. Warner, A. C. 
Fiske, Judge Jefford, J. L. Wofford and Frederick Speed, 
nearly all Northerners, opposed what they called the Egg- 
leston clique, and favored the policy which was afterward 
adopted. 

"While the subject was yet before congress, Gen. U. S. 
Grant was inaugurated as president, March 4, 1869. The 
overwhelming support of Grant as a candidate in 1868 had 
its effect upon the situation in Mississippi and elsewhere, 
as indicating the inevitable. After his inauguration, presi- 
dent and congress pursued one policy. Gen. Gillem was 
removed from district command, and the provisional gov- 
ernor of Mississippi, Gen. Adelbert Ames, was appointed his 
successor. 

''Just before the Reconstruction committee closed its 
hearings, A. G. Brown, Judge SimralL and others, represent- 
ing the Democratic party of the State, appeared before it, 
and were given 'a full and patient hearing.' An argument 
between two of these gentlemen and two of the Repub- 
lican committee was heard by President Grant. His con- 
clusion was that the proscriptive clauses in the constitution 
were wrong; that the people could not afford to have an- 
other convention, and he suggested resubmission with the 
objectionable clauses stricken out, which Brown and Sim- 
rail approved. 

'The president's suggestion carried weight with con- 
gress, which considered two plans of re-submission of the 
rejected constitutions of Mississippi, Virginia and Texas — 
one by Gen. B. F. Butler, and the other by General Farns- 
worth, of Illinois. The Farnsworth plan was finally 
adopted, as the basis, amended by Senator Morton, of In- 
diana, to require the State to adopt the Fifteenth amend- 
ment to the constitution of the United States before the 
restoration of representation in Congress. This bill be- 
came a law in April, 1869, immediately after which Con- 



— 41 — 

gress adjourned, leaving the completion of the work to the 
president. 

"The Fifteenth amendment, intended to reinforce the 
Fourteenth amendment, had passed Congress February 
25, 1869. It provided that The right of the citizens of the 
United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by 
the United States, or by any State, on account of race, 
color, or previous condition of servitude,' and authorized 
enforcement by legislation. 

''By proclamation of President Grant, July 13, 1869, 
the constitution of 1868 was resubmitted at an election 
November 30, 1869. It was adopted with a number of the 
worst features stricken out. With the large negro vote 
all the Republican candidates for State office, legislature, 
and congress were elected by great majorities. Ac- 
cordingly the legislature of the State, for the first time 
since 1866, met in January, 1870, under the new constitu- 
tion, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth! amendments were rati- 
fied, and the United States senators were elected. All the 
other States had been re-admitted in January, 1870. Gen- 
eral Butler reported a bill in the lower house of congress 
February 3, 1870, re-admitting Mississippi, but with the 
conditions of a stringent oath of allegiance for civil officers, 
and pledges that the constitution should never be amended 
so as to deprive any citizen of the right to vote, or to hold 
office because of race, color or previous condition of servi- 
tude, or so as to ever deprive any citizen of the benefits of 
the public schools. Senator Morton in the S-anate added 
other restrictions. The bill thus passed both houses and 
was approved February 23, 1870. General Ames, who had 
been elected one of the United States senators, issued his 
general orders No. 25, February 26, 1870, announcing that 
the command known as the Fourth military district had 
ceased to exist." The foregoing summary covering military 
rule has been drawn from the Encyclopedia of Mississippi 
History. 

Reconstruction had for its prime motive negro enfran- 
chisement and white disfranchisement, and throughout the 



— 42 — 

whole period of reconstruction the Republican party had 
kept its eye on the establishment of a Republican party in 
the South. Though the enfranchisement of the negro was 
not as dear an issue to the hearts of the politicians as it was 
to the abolitionists, these were determined to use the negro 
to insure a stronger representation in congress. Out of 
this spirit grew the Fourteenth amendment which constitut- 
ed the rock of offense. 

Though every vestige of State's rights must be ignored 
and congress must wholly transgress its authority in con- 
ferring suffrage upon the people of a State without the 
State having any voice in the matter, still it intended and 
did carry out this policy. In reference to prevailing condi- 
tions Dr. Rowland further says in ''A Mississippi View of 
Race Relations": 

"The reconstruction period found the negro free; his 
freedom was not the result of his own efforts, although in 
most instances it was his desire to be free. The entire ab- 
sence of self-reliance, his want of experience, and his failure 
to understand or appreciate his changed condition rendered 
him, after his emancipation, helpless. At this critical time 
the carpet-bagger invaded the South, intent on little else 
but gain. The pathway towards better things was blocked. 

"The picture presented by some writers, of conditions 
prevailing in the South during the period of reconstruction 
may strike those who know nothing of it as too somber, 
and some thinking and impartial men of the North are in- 
clined to believe that Southern historians overdraw it. At 
this time, however, thirty years after the war, in the light 
of all facts of history, the student of that period whose 
opinions are not embittered by the trials of the times, 
stands in astonishment, marveling at the patience and long- 
suffering of the people." 

CHAPTER IV 

In the foregoing summary is embraced the period 
of 1865 to 1868 ; for a study of the period following, see the 
administration of Alcorn, Powers and Ames. With the 



— 43—. 

close of Ames' administration in 1875, though he was still 
governor of the State, the old Democracy which had been set 
aside during the lawless and despotic reign of the military, 
threw off the Republican; rule and elected a Democratic 
legislature, during which session Ames was impeached. 
However, before the articles of impeachment could become 
effective, his resignation took place, March 29, 1876. John 
M. Stone as President pro tem of the Senate became Gover- 
nor and with his administration began the re- 
habilitation of the State's political, financial and social pro- 
gress. These had for ten years suif ered' from every con- 
ceivable wrong and mismanagement that bitter partisan- 
ship and sectional jealousy could devise. In withstanding the 
hard conditions, opposition sometimes brought on fierce con- 
flicts and riots took place at several places in the state. 
Hinds county having a full share, the one at Clinton being 
the most noted. 

Many able leaders who were to place aureoles of light 
around the old State's brow with the passing of years gath- 
ered in the capital during this period, prominently among 
them L. Q. C. Lamar, J. Z. George, and E. C. Walthall, and 
it became once more a Democratic center. Hinds County 
at this time furnished such leaders as Amos R. Johnston, 
Ethelbert Barksdale, William and George Yerger, T. J. 
Wharton, Gen. Wirt Adams and Frank Johnston, son of 
Amos R. Johnston. Judge J. A. P. Campbell, a native of 
South Carolina and member of the Confederate Congress 
from Mississippi, on being appointed on the Supreme Bench 
in 1876 by Governor Stone, made Jackson his home. Sena- 
tor J. Z. George moved to the capital in 1873 and made it 
his home for a number of years. Of that great political 
coterie only a few survive, J. P. Carter, P. C. Catchings, W. 
H. Sims and Judge R. H. Thompson, the last mentioned later 
becoming a citizen of Hinds county. He was a member of 
the Democratic legislature of 1876. Among the 
brilliant young members he perhaps surpassed all 
in intellectual power and quick perception. Few States 
have produced a better lawyer or a better balanced and 



,— 44 — 

more profound thinker. To this add a kindly and sympa- 
thetic nature and a slightly peremptory manner and you 
have the fine old man to whom the people of Jackson and 
Hinds County point with so much pride. 

The county at this time, though handicapped from the 
effects of the war and reconstruction, began an era of im- 
provement. Its political life was strong and effective; its 
lands were better cultivated and its towns began to grow, 
and endeavoring to forget the past, as Amos R. Johnston 
so eloquently bade them, conservation and progress once 
more became the keynote of its existence. 

It was in 1886 that the educational system was revised 
and placed on a sound basis by Hon. J. R. Preston, State 
Superintendent of Education. A Virginian by birth, he 
gave his fine intellect and culture to his adopted state, lov- 
ing it with an intense love and ever jealous for its honor 
and distinction at home and abroad. Many years after Miss- 
issippi, Hinds County and the city of Jackson had reaped 
the benefit of his great work for public education, he settled 
in the city, conducted one of its best colleges and is still a 
citizen of the place. He is one of the three state officials 
who have survived that period. Capt. W. W. Stone, and Col. 
W. L. Hemingway, heroic Confederate veterans, whom all 
Mississippi loves, make the trio, and the dignity and beauty 
of their declining years thrill the hearts of all who meet 
them on our streets. 

During the years embracing 1876-1896 many of the 
most distinguished public men of the State became perma- 
nent citizens of the county, making their homes in the 
capital city; among these were Gov. Robert Lowrey, Judge 
S. S. Calhoun, Judge Tim E. Cooper, Judge Albert Whit- 
field, Col. R. H. Henry, of the Clarion Ledger, Hon. Edgar 
S. Wilson, Col. W. D. Holder, Judge Edward Mayes and 
R. E. Wilson. Their varied service to the county and State 
would make volumes of interesting reading. 

As early as ]'SV4 among the reforms, prohibition was 
agitating the public mind, led by such spirits as Bishop 



— 45 — 

Charles B. Galloway and Col. W. L. Nugent, representing 
the manhood of the State, and Harriet B. Kells and Belle 
Kearney, representing its womanhood. In 1881 Frances 
E. Willard visited the county in the interest of prohibition 
and met with an enthusiastic reception in the capital city. 

The constitutional convention of 1890 met in Jackson 
on August 12, 1890, with such strong and capable leaders as 
J. Z. George and Wiley P. Harris. The delegation from Hinds 
consisted of Judge S. S. Calhoun, B. S. Fearing, T. T. Hart 
and Wiley P. Harris. This convention in regulating the suff- 
rage question restored the county and state to further quiet 
and order. Among the many plans for progress the agitation 
for a new capitol was inaugurated in the same convention, 
Gen. S. D. Lee offering the resolution. It was at, this con- 
vention that Jackson was fixed as the permanent capital. 
In commenting on the constitution of 1890, Judge R. H. 
Thompson, in an address to the State Bar Association, said : 
*The seat of government is now fixed at Jackson and cannot 
be removed except by vote of the people. For many years 
there was no State Capital de jure. The constitution' of 
1869 made no reference to the subject; it was fixed at Jack 
son by the constitution of 1832, until 1850 and, thereafter 
until the code of 1880 was adopted, Jackson was only de 
facto the capital of the State." 

Many other notable events in the history of the county 
and of the city of Jackson occurred during the period; fol- 
lowing reconstruction, one of which was the establishment 
of Millsaps College by the Methodists under the leadership 
of the truly great and gifted Bishop Charles B. Galloway 
and of Major R. W. Millsaps, the latter being its financial 
benefactor and lifelong patron. This was an important 
step forward in educational progress and the county has in 
this and Mississippi College at Clinton two of the leading 
educational institutions in the South. These have recently 
become co-educational. 

Another notable institution of learning is Belhaven 
College for Young Women, first confji^/cted by Dr. L. T. 
Fitzhugh and later owned by Hon. J. R. Preston. The 



— 46 — 

old site was sold and the new college established in the 
northeastern part of the city and is now the property of 
the Presbytorian Church. It was as far back as 1853 that 
yellow fever made its appearance in the county and city of 
Jackson to be followed by a like epidemic in 1878. No more 
heroic conduct was exhibited by any people when these 
scourges from time to time appeared than that displayed by 
the people of Hinds county and the city of Jackson. 

The years following the War for Southern Independence 
and reconstruction with the exception of the call for volun- 
teers for the Spanish American War to which call Hinds 
county responded generously, were years of peaceful 
growth and progress. The decade before and since 
the building of the new capitol, in 1901-1903, brought to 
the county and the city of Jackson many people of culture 
and wealth, and its social life, founded upon the best ideals 
of the South, despite the political atmosphere that in- 
variably surrounds State capitals, is distinctly aspiring and 
is filled with the altruistic ideal. 

It is not the province of this paper to give the history 
of the county for the last few decades, since its present 
growth and progress is amply set forth, in the census at- 
tached, while its political history awaits the future his- 
torian. I, however, could not leave my subject without 
recording, as a fore-word to the heroic history that is yet 
to be written of the county's part in the Great World War, 
that the spirit its people evinced during these years was 
every inch in keeping with that manifested in such war 
torn centers as Washington, Paris and London. In the work 
of restoration following the war the people of both Jackson 
and Hinds county have displayed the same energy and wis- 
dom and the ability to ''carry on" that marked their efforts 
during the war. But with all this we should recognize the 
fact that there is need of improvement along many social 
welfare lines. It is said on all sides by both priest and lay- 
men that our civilization has along with other sections felt 
the breakdown th;4^ ^inevitably follows war. Though here 
as elsewhere society has its usual quota of presuming, con- 



— 47 — 

niving, self-seekers who use both the Church and the State 
to exploit themselves, sincerity, modesty and refinement 
are still possessed by the majority of the people, and family 
life, in the main, is sound and secure. 

Hinds County has modestly given way to other sections 
of the State in the matter of public office and has furnish- 
ed no Governor and only one United States senator since 
the Civil War — Senator James K. Vardaman, who was 
elected in 1911, at which time he was a resident of Jackson, 
having been a citizen of Greenwood, Leflore County, when 
elected governor. 

CHAPTER V. 

The historical and political history of Hinds County 
having been lightly sketched, we now turn to its physical 
structure and advantages. It lies partly, as has been not- 
ed, in what Hilgard, a former State Geologist, designates as 
the Central Prairie Region and Dr. E. N. Lowe, the present 
State Geologist, groups in the Jackson Prairie Region. 
This constitutes a section of small prairies which form 
a belt varying from 10 to 30 miles wide in a direction 
slightly northwest and southeast across the State. The 
northern border of this region extends from Yazoo City 
slightly south of east through Clarke County and on to the 
Alabama line. This region embraces the northern portion of 
Hinds County. 

The "shell prairies" soil is described by geologists as 
"a heavy, clayey soil of dark gray color, black when wet, 
resting upon a lighter gray subsoil which passes at a few 
feet depth into the highly calcareous shell marls of the 
Jackson Formation." The soil is highly calcareous forming 
numerous gently rolling prairies. 

"In much of Hinds county, south of the Jackson 
Prairies," Dr. Lowe in his "Survey of the Soils of Missis- 
sippi," says, "the loam lies directly upon the gray sands and 
clays of the Grand Gulf, the Lafayette being absent or but 
slightly developed. In the vicinity of Raymond the red 



— 48 — 

sand is well developed, a railroad cut just west of the town 
exposing about ten feet of loam and 10 to 12 feet of red 
sand overlying clay." 

Some of the upland sandy and silt soils of Hinds coun- 
ty, geologists tell us, are acid and would be greatly benefited 
by an application of ground limestone. The shell marls 
and the soft limestones of the Vicksburg formation are 
available and are suited for this purpose. Some of the soil 
of the county could be made suitable for the growing of 
alfalfa by an application of ground limestone. The princi- 
pal crops now grown in the county will be shown in the 
census for 1920. 

The Pearl River Valley cuts north and south through 
the whole Pine Belt, and presents a prominent soil region, 
worthy of separate consideration. It is a broad, second 
bottom, the first bottom being usually rather narrow, vary- 
ing in width from two to four miles. The greater portion 
of it is free from overflow, and except where cultivated is, 
for the most part, heavily timbered with various hardwoods. 
The central and southern portion of Hinds county is em- 
braced in this region.^ 

The excitement of oil discoveries in Louisiana and 
Texas later extended to Mississippi. Since the geological 
structure of the State in certain sections is very much like 
that of Louisiana, there was keen hope of finding oil accum- 
ulations. Hinds County has shared in the pursuit which so 
far has been fruitless. But there are other things besides 
oil, and the county is today covered with a network of rail- 
roads which give an outlet in every direction for the products 
of its rich cotton and corn lands, busy factories and live 
stock farms that compare favorably with any in the United 
States. 

The Pearl River forming the county's eastern boundary, 
the Big Black on part of its western boundary and the num- 
erous tributaries of these streams furnish ample water 
power. Besides this, numerous springs of mineral water 

.>-T . 

1. For a further study of this feature see Hilgard's "Geology and 
Agriculture of Mississippi" and Lowe's "Soils and Resources of Mississippi." 



— 49 — 

are found in many places, Cooper's Wells, a short distance 
west of Jackson, being a health resort that ranks with the 
best in the South, possessing an interesting history of its 
own. Its natural scenery is good but wholly neglected and 
it is in need of appropriate buildings. 

The census shows some decrease in population during 
the last decade, caused by an exodus of the negroes to 
northern cities. These, however, were not of the better 
class and constituted a shifting population that constantly 
moved about in the State before leaving it, The census 
shows that there are only 306 white foreign born in the 
county, of whom 65 are Syrians, 44 English and 42 Germans. 
This may be a questionable advantage. 

Many prosperous cities, towns and villages are found 
in the county. The largest and most important city is 
Jackson, the capital of the State. It is located on the 
western bank of the Pearl River and is regularly laid out on 
a beautiful eminence which forms a structural dome or 
broad anticline in what might be termed a valley. It is 
the center of a fine corn and cotton growing region,' situat- 
ed nearly halfway between Memphis and New Orleans, 
and commands a large territory for its wholesale trade. 
Timber of a valuable variety is plentiful in the district 
drained by the Pearl River and its tributaries. This river 
is navigable during high water for at least 100 miles above 
the city, offering an excellent outlet for much local trans- 
portation. 

The legislation dealing with the location of the capital 
is given in the first chapter of this history. The first 
state house erected in the city was a little, brick two-story 
building costing about $3,000. It was used for legislative 
purposes until 1839, when it grew inadequate for the State's 
increasing activities. A painting has been made of this 
building from the legislative description found in the pro- 
vision for it, and now is in the possession of the State His- 
torical Department. 
(See Official and Statistical Register, 1917, page 385). 

In 1833 a bill passed the legislature for the erection of 



— 50 — 

a new capitol building which now stands on State Street at 
the head of Capitol Street. Much of the material used in 
its construction came from Hinds and surrounding counties. 
The effort made by the women of Mississippi for its restora- 
tion covering a period of fourteen years was a distinct tri- 
umph of historical culture in the State's higher progress. 
For a history of the building, see page 388, Mississippi 
Official and Statistical Register, 1917. A few of the 
many inspiring events that make it one of the most historic 
buildings in the South are: a visit from Kossuth, the Hun- 
garian patriot, an oration by McClung on the character of 
Henry Clay, a visit from General Andrew Jackson when he 
paid the State a second visit, a reception to Henry Clay, the 
Great Pacificator, the welcome to Col. Jefferson Davis on 
his return from the Mexican War, the convention of 1850, 
the famous secession convention, the expulsion of Governors 
Clark and Humphreys from office during the military reign 
following the Civil War, the impeachment of Governor 
Ames in March, 1876, the last public appearance in the cap- 
ital of President Jefferson Davis, and finally, the constitu- 
tional convention of 1890, which assembled on August 12th 
and enacted the present constitution of the State. It adds a 
sacred touch that the lower floor of the building, by per- 
mission of the legislature, was used by the various churches 
in the 40 's, and also during the War for Southern Independ- 
ence. The Governor's mansion was built at the same time, 
and has a long and varied history made up of what each 
occupant was able to lend to the story. 

Sixty-three years after the erection of what is now 
called the Old Capitol, a beautiful new capitol building was 
erected in 1901-1903, situated on a hill north of the old 
capitol site and on the penitentiary ground. It was com- 
pleted at a cost of little more than $1,000,000, during the 
administration of Gov. A. H. Longino. The material 
is Bedford stone on a base of cement, concrete and 
Georgia granite and its height is 135 feet. This handsome 
structure, built on classic lines, is one of the most stately 
and imposing public buildings ir> the country. The build- 



— Sl- 
ing was first occupied by the State officials, during the 
month of September, 1903. The State Historical Depart- 
ment and beautiful Hall of Fame are located in the new 
capitol. The dedication of the building was made a State- 
wide celebration such as has not been witnessed for years in 
the commonwealth. 

Besides the State capitol, Jackson has many handsome 
bank and office buildings, a large theatre and several other 
playhouses, the institution for the Deaf and Dumb, the 
Mississippi, Institution for the Blind, three orphan homes 
and five institutions of learning, the more prominent of 
which are, as has already been noted, Millsaps College and 
Belhaven College. Campbell College for Negroes is doing 
good work and the negroes of the city generally are indus- 
trious, orderly and progressive. The city has one of the 
best school systems in the State. The enrollment in the 
seven graded schools is large and it should be a matter of 
great pride to know that less than a thousand illit- 
erates are found in the city's population. 

Within recent years, Jackson has become the most im- 
portant railroad center of the State. The Illinois Central, 
the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley, the Alabama & Vicks- 
burg, the Gulf & Ship Island, and the New Orleans Great 
Northern R. R. enter the city and furnish excellent traffic ac- 
commodations in all directions. This has resulted in the 
rapid increase in the manufacturing population. In pro- 
portion to the capital invested, it has the largest manufac- 
turing output of any city in the South and ranks high in 
the number of establishments. Among the most important 
enterprises are fertilizer factories, cotton seed oil mills, 
iron foundries, wood working plants and ice factories. 

Well-paved streets, splendid sewerage and water 
works system, an electric street railway system serving 
the principal parts of the city, gas and electricity and an 
up-to-date fire department, with modern stations and paid 
service, constitute the municipal department. It has a 
Chamber of Commerce and numerous social and benevolent 
organizations, is well supplied with beautiful parks and 



— 52 — 

playgrounds and has a fine Country Club. The small Con- 
federate park near the Old Capitol contains a statue to the 
Confederate soldiers, where on the 30th of June, each year 
the patriotic organizations representing the Confederacy 
gather to do honor to Jefferson Davis, the only president of 
the Confederacy, whose statue occupies a prominent place 
on the monument. (This statue by legislative act will be 
removed to the Old Capitol building.) Livingston, Poindexter, 
and Smith parks and a number of other fine parks are note- 
worthy additions to the city, and to be known as "the city 
of parks'' it only remains for it to purchase the historic 
''Winter Woods," where the old Confederate fortifications 
can still be traced that were thrown up to defend the city 
when Grant's whole army entered and partially destroyed 
the almost unprotected town. 

Numerous fine residences with ample lawns and every 
convenience are found throughout the city, but the people 
have been careless in conforming to a uniform or even an 
attractive architectural design and the appearance becomes 
irregular and patchy in places. Commodious and hand- 
some houses of worship for those of the Baptist, Methodist, 
Pi-esbyterian, Episcopal, Catholic, Christian and Jewish 
faith are found on the principal streets, some denominations 
having several churches in the city. Besides these there 
are numerous churches of several denominations for the ne- 
gro population. 

The financial wants of the city and county are well 
provided for in eleven banking institutions. Among the 
daily newspapers, the Clarion-Ledger and the Daily News 
are Democratic dailies, the latter having the widest circu- 
lation of any paper in the State and the former making 
good its claim that it "prints all the news fit to print and 
prints it while it is fresh." Vardaman's Weekly and the 
Baptist Record are issued weekly. It remains for the Hinds 
County Gazette, published at Raymond, to enjoy the dis- 
tinction of being the oldest newspaper continuously pub- 
lished in the county. It has recently been purchased by Mr. 
Edgar S. Wilson, who is making it a statewide paper. 



— 53 — 

In the foregoing pages a brief history of the Capital 
City has been given. It has been said that it contains fewer 
illustrious men than formerly but in and out of its more pre- 
tentious homes and its vine-clad cottages still go lovely 
men and women with high purposes and pure hearts, and 
the beauty o:? its life is that some of the loveliest spirits a- 
dorn its simplest homes. 

Clinton, another landmark which has been often re- 
ferred to in these pages, is an old college town of much his- 
torical interest about ten miles west of Jackson, a paved 
street after many years threatening to make the two places 
one. In 1831, Mississippi College, which is largely respon- 
sible for the atmosphere of culture and refinement pervad- 
ing the town, had its beginning. Next to Jeif erson College, 
near Natchez in Adams county, this is the oldest male col- 
lege in the State. It has had some depressing periods in 
its history, but has emerged victorious in every crisis, and 
today is widely recognized as an ideal institution of higher 
learning for young men, ranking with many of the bast 
in the South. Among its alumni are some of the most dis- 
tinguished men in the educational circles^ of the country. 
Another college with which Clinton is closely associated is 
Hillman College. Among the surviving colleges for wo- 
men in the State, Hillman is one of the pioneers, and among 
the thousands of students enrolled there since 1857 are 
many of the most distinguished women of the State. 
Here is also located the Mt. Hermon Female Seminary for 
the education of negro girls. Governor Foote on a public 
occasion in a celebrated toast characterized Clinton as 
*'the seat of learning" in the State. The present growth 
and progress of the town is given in the census of 1920. 

Edwards is an old, incorporated town of Hinds County 
on the Alabama and Vicksburg Railway, 26 miles by rail 
west of Jackson, 18 miles east of Vicksburg, and one mile 
from the Big Black river. The lands lying around it are 
fruit and vegetable soils, and its people are thrifty and 
progressive. It is an interesting place, set as it is in the 
historic campania lying between Jackson and Vicksburg, 



— 54 — 

every foot of which has been tread by the defenders of the 
South against an invading foe. 

Terry, an incorporated post-town in the southeastern 
part of Hinds County, on the Illinois Central Railroad, is 
16 miles south and west of Jackson. The town was named 
for William Terry, affectionately referred to as "Uncle 
Bill Terry," a former resident of the vicinity. Truck 
farming and market gardening are extensively carried on 
in the surrounding country and this station is one of the 
most important fruit and vegetable shipping points in the 
State. Peaches, pears, figs, plums, strawberries and all kinds 
of vegetables and fruits are scientifically cultivated for 
market. Flowers are grown in profusion about the homes, 
and its people are refined and well bred. The bank of 
Terry was established in 1897 with a capital of $20,000. 
The census of 1920 will show the present condition of the 
town. 

Raymond, one of the county seats, is an old place of 
much historical importance and interest. It is a station on 
the Natchez branch of the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley 
Railroad and was the scene of the first battle in Grant's 
and Sherman's march from Port Gibson. 

Utica, in the southwestern part of the county, is an 
incorporated post-town. It is situated on the Y. & 
M. V. Railroad, 32 -miles southwest of Jackson. It is 
hilly, well-drained and surrounded by a rich farming sec- 
tion. All kinds of fruit and vegetables, especially water- 
melons, grow in abundance in the soil. The town is acces- 
sible to a large amount of fine hardwood timber. It ships 
annually about 10,000 bales of cotton. It has two banks 
with a combined capital of $90,000; two hotels; a public 
school; an industrial college for the education of negroes; 
three churches, Methodist, Baptist and Christian; and a 
Democratic weekly newspaper, the Herald, established in 
1897. Among its manufacturing enterprises are a brick 
plant, three steam cotton gins, and a saw mill. Many 
organizations that embrace intellectual as well as material 
progress are found in this thriving little city. 



— 55 — 

Bolton is an incorporated post-town in Hinds County. 
It is a pleasant, small town with many community inter- 
ests and past historical associations. 

Halifax, Orangeville, Brownsville, Byram, Tinnin, Po- 
cahontas, Green, Cynthia, Anne, Tougaloo, Dixon, Norell, 
Champion Hill, Institute, Smith's, Newman, Learned, Duke, 
Cayuga, Bearcreek, Chapelhill, Adams Station, Thompson- 
ville, Inabnet, Oakley, Dry Grove, Box Factory, Moncure, 
Rosemary, Davis Spur, Myers, Midway, Palestine, Siwell, 
Elton, Bradie, Van Winkle,Thompson and McRaven are small 
places in the county of interest, and business enterprise and 
many of these have a per cent of as good society as is found 
in the State Capital. 

The census of 1920 gives the county of Hinds the fol- 
lowing flattering statistics : 

POPULATION HINDS COUNTY 
Composition And Characteristics 

Color or Race, Nativity, and Sex. 

Total population 57,110 

Male 27,492 

Female 29,618 

Native White 21,078 

Male 10,260 

Female 10,813 

Native parentage 20,314 

Foreign parentage 367 

Mixed parentage 392 

Foreign white 306 

Male 186 

Female 120 

Negro 35,728 

Male 17,044 

Female 18,684 

Indians, Chinese and all others 3 

Per cent, Native white 36.9 

Per cent. Foreign born 0.5 

Per cent, Negro 62.6 



— 56 — 

Age, School Attendance, and Citizenship 

Total under 7 years of age 8,293 

Total, 7 to 13 years, inclusive 9,691 

No. Attending School 8,566 

Per cent attending school 88.4 

Total, 14 to 15 years 2,658 

No. attending school 2,151 

Per cent attending school 80.9 

Total 16 to 17 years 2,450 

No. attending school 1,340 

Per cent attending school 54.7 

Total 18 to 20 yrs., inclusive 3,453 

No. attending school 635 

Per cent attending school 18.9 

Males 21 years of age and over 14,616 

Native white — Native parentage 5,745 

Native white — Foreign or mixed parentage 237 

Foreign-born, white 237 

Naturalized 175 

First papers 83 

Alien 8 

Unknown 56 

Negro 8,457 

Indian, Chinese and all others 2 

Females, 21 years of age and over 15,949 

Native white — native parentage 6,112 

Native white. Foreign or mixed parentage 289 

Foreign-born white 110 

Naturalized 50 

First papers 

Alien 32 

Unknown 28 

Negro 9,438 

Indian and Chinese 

Males, 18 to 44 years, inclusive 10,491 

Females, 18 to 44 years, inclusive 12,851 

HINDS COUNTY 

Land area in square miles 853 

Total population, 1920 57,110 



— 57 — 

Per square mile 66.6 

Total population, 1910 63,726 

Total population, 1900 52,577 

Per cent of increase 

1910 to 1920 —10.4 

1900 to 1910 21.2 

1890 to 1900 33.9 

Population of All Incorporated Towns and 
Cities in Hinds County, 1920 

Bolton 494 Edwards 727 

Learned 136 Utica 445 

Clinton 669 Jackson 22,817 

Terry _ 392 Raymond 500 

ILLITERACY 

Total, 10 years of age and over 44,834 

No. illiterate \ 7,011 

Per cent, illiterate - 15.6 

Per cent illiterate in 1910 22.8 

Native white 17,134 

No. illiterate 282 

Per cent illiterate 11.0 

Foreign-bom, white '299 

No. illiterate 33 

Negro _ 27,399 

No. illiterate 6,696 

Per cent illiterate 24.4 

Total, 16 to 20 years, inclusive 5,903 

No. illiterate 587 

Per cent illiterate 9.9 

Illiterate males, over 21 yrs. of age _ 2,849 

Per cent of all males 21 yrs. of age and over 19.5 

Native white 113 

Foreign-born, white 18 

Negro 2,718 

Illiterate females, over 21 yrs. of age 3,151 

Per cent of all females 21 yrs. of age and over 19.8 

Native white _ 1 13 

Foreign-born, white 15 



— 58 — 

Negro 3,023 

DWEUJ^"^-^ AND FAMILIES 

Dwellings, No _ 12,121 

Families No 12,897 

AGRICULTURAL CENSUS— HINDS COUNTY 

All Farms 

No. farms, 1920 5,951 

All farmers classified by sex, 1920 

Male 5,381 

Female 570 

Color and nativity of all farmers, 1920 

Native white 1,172 

Foreign-born white 8 

Negro and other non-white .■ 4,771 

All Farms Classified by size, 1920 : 

Under 3 acres ^ 2 

3 to 9 acres 155 

10 to 19 acres 853 

20 to 49 acres 3,354 

50 to 99 acres 789 

100 to 174 acres 412 

175 to 259 acres 173 

260 to 499 acres 130 

500 to 999 acres 49 

1000 acres and over 34 

Land and Farm Area Acres 

Approximate land area, 1920 549,120 

Land in farms, 1920 391,016 

Improved land in farms, 1920 269,816 

Woodland in farms, 1920 73,565 

Other unimproved land in farms 47,635 

Per cent of land area in farms 71.2 

Per cent of farm land improved 69.0 

Average acreage per farm 65.7 

Average improved acreage per farm 45.3 

Value of Farm Property 

All farm property $17,903,283 

Land in farms 9,820,324 

Farm buildings 3,341,256 



— 59 — 

Implements and Machinery 1,001,417 

Live stock on farms 3,740,286 

Average values 

All property 3,008 

Land and buildings, per farm 2,212 

Land alone, per acre $25.11 

Farms Operated By Own»3rs 

No. of farms 1,350 

Per cent of all farms 22.7 

Land in farms, acres 200,568 

Improved land in farms, acres 120,413 

Value of land in buildings $6,055,957 

Degree of Ownership 

Farmers owning entire farm 1,171 

Farmers hiring additional land 179 

Color and nativity of owners 

Native white owners 675 

Foreign-born white owners 6 

Negro and other non-white owners 669 

Farms Operated By Managers 

No. of farms .: 44 

Land in farms, acres 29,599 

Improved land in farms 20,133 

Value of land and buildings $1,400,495 

Farms Operated by Tenants 

No. of farms 4,557 

Per cent of all farms 76.6 

Land in farms, acres 160,849 

Improved land in farms 129,270 

Value of land and buildings $5,705,128 

Form of Tenancy 

Share tenants 889 

Croppers 2,289 

Share-cash tenants 21 

Cash tenants 511 

Standing renters 891 

Unspecified : 6 

Color and nativity of tenants 

Native white tenants 459 



— 60 — 

Foreign-born white tenants 1 

Negro and other non-white tenants 4,097 

MANUFACTURES HINDS COUNTY 

Number of Establishments 82 

Wage Earners — Average number 1,779 

Wages $ 1,418,530 

Rent and Taxes 227,657 

Cost of Materials 9,827,591 

Value of Products 13,789,266 

Value added by manufacture 3,961,675 

Primary horse power 7,620 



JACKSON 

November 28, 1821, April 28, 1822—1922. 

The Legisl^ature which had convened in Colum- 
bia ratified the selection of the site of Jackson for the 
Capital November 28, 1821. The town was laid off in 
April, 1822, and the State government removed to the new 
capital in the autumn of 1822, the legislature meeting for 
the first time on December 23. Gov. Walter Leake in his 
message on December 24th congratulated the members on 
the new two story brick capitol building which had been 
erected for its use in 1822. This stood on the northeast 
corner of Capitol and President Streets, now occupied by 
the Harding Building. The site should be marked with a 
bronze tablet with the figures of Gens. Jackson and Hinds 
and Pushmataha in bas-relief. 

The following poem is in commemoration of the 
city's centenary: 

Fair City of our hope we come 

to sing your praise! 
And every glad tongue frames for you 

sweet, tuneful lays. 

You wake a chord within our hearts 

that sings and sings. 
Like the swift whir of eager bird 

on homing wings. 

To-day you count the treasure of 

a hundred years — 
Rich hoardings for your children's use 

unmixed with tears. 

Your love abundant blesses all 

who dwell beside 
Your hearthstones warm and pure, where peace 

and hope abide. 



— 62 — 

Your pleasant prospect lures men's feet ; 

with all who come 
You share rich opportunity 

and heart and home. 

Your heavy toil and sweat and grime 

and every strife 
But serve to make your comely limbs 

throb with new life. 

It was not always thus with you — 

a wilding race 
Left on your page a story we 

would not efface; 

And fame of Pushmataha will 

forever be 
A sign to teach men faithfulness 

and loyalty. 

The names of Jackson and of Hinds, 

linked on your scroll, 
Are names that Mississippi holds 

dear to her soul. 

Your youth is clad in mail that speaks 

of chivalry, 
For feat and high adventure thrill 

its history; 

Wherever Liberty's fair feet 

have trod lone heights 
Your valiant legions ever have been 

her accolytes. 

When bugles sounded in the west 

in Freedom's name 
With Davis, Quitman, your strong sons 

won lasting fame. 



— -63 — 

And in your joyous, early prime 

there was a day 
When, scourged by ruthless war your walls 

in ashes lay. 

And every sacred hall and isle 

and path and street 
For many a bitter day were trod 

by alien feet; 

But with a hope that dark despair 

disowns, disdains, 
Your fearless sons and daughters have 

rebuilt your fanes. 

Today in strength and might you come, 

as in your youth. 
Girded to win God's battle for 

the right and truth; 

While safe and all unfearing on 

your faithful breast 
Your children — poor and rich alike, 

securely rest. 

ERON 0. ROWLAND. 



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